t- 


LIBRARY 

OF  THE 

UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA. 

Deceived        JAN   16    1893    ,  ,89 
^Accessions  No.  xTo~#~*fQ  .  Class  No. 


\ 


MECHANISM  AND  PERSONALITY: 


AN 


OUTLINE    OF    PHILOSOPHY    IN    THE    LIGHT    OF 
THE   LATEST   SCIENTIFIC   RESEARCH. 


BY 


FRANCIS  A.   SHOUP,  D.D., 

PROFESSOR  OF  ANALYTICAL  PHYSICS,  UNIVERSITY  OF  THE  SOUTH. 


BOSTON,  U.S.A.: 

PUBLISHED   BY   GINN   &  COMPANY. 
1891. 


"  The  truth  which  draws 

Through  all  things  upwards;  that  a  two-fold  world 
Must  go  to  a  perfect  cosmos.     Natural  things 
And  spiritual,  —  who  separates  those  two 
In  art,  in  morals,  or  the  social  drift, 
Tears  up  the  bond  of  nature  and  brings  death, 
Paints  futile  pictures,  writes  unreal  verse, 
Leads  vulgar  days,  deals  ignorantly  with  men, 
Is  wrong,  in  short,  at  all  points." 

—  Aurora  Leigh. 


"The  reconciliation  of  physics  and  metaphysics  lies  in  the  acknowl- 
edgment of  faults  upon  both  sides;  in  the  confession  by  physics  that  all  the 
phenomena  of  nature  are,  in  their  ultimate  analysis,  known  to  us  only  as 
facts  of  consciousness  ;  in  the  admission  by  metaphysics,  that  the  facts  of 
consciousness  are,  practically,  interpretable  only  by  the  methods  and  the 
formulae  of  physics."  —  Professor  Huxley. 


PREFACE. 


SOME  time  ago  a  gentleman  of  excellent  attainments 
requested  the  author  of  the  following  pages  to  recom- 
mend him  a  book  which  would  give,  within  moderate  compass, 
the  present  attitude  of  Philosophy  in  the  light  of  the  latest 
scientific  research,  and  that  in  a  way  suited  to  the  comprehen- 
sion of  the  ordinary  reader.  The  author  mentioned  several 
books  which  he  thought  would  in  some  sort  answer  the  pur- 
pose, but  at  the  same  time  had  to  confess  that  he  could  think 
of  no  one  work  which  exactly  met  the  case.  Reflecting  after- 
wards from  time  to  time  upon  the  subject/ he  was  still  unable 
to  fix  upon  any  one  such  book. 

It  was  in  this  way  that  the  need  of  something  to  meet  the 
growing  inquiry  as  to  what  has  become  of  metaphysic  in  the 
glare  of  the  scientific  thought  of  the  day  impressed  itself  upon 
the  author,  and  that  he  conceived  the  idea  of  trying  what  he 
could  do  himself  in  the  way  of  outlining  an  answer.  These 
pages  are  the  result  of  his  effort. 

The*  author  has  tried  to  keep  the  general  reader  in  mind, 
and,  as  a  result,  the  book  is  largely  elementary;  but,  while 
aiming  at  simplicity  and  clearness,  he  has  not  thought  it  best 
to  avoid  entirely  the  recognized  terminology  of  the  subject. 
Care  has  been  taken,  however,  when  introducing  purely  tech- 
nical terms,  to  give  equivalent  expressions  in  common  speech. 
The  author  has  been  at  times  tempted  —  almost  compelled  — 


VI  PREFACE. 

to  enter  upon  disputed  ground,  and  to  venture  upon  questions 
of  considerable  subtlety,  but,  for  all  that,  the  book  will  be 
found,  in  the  main,  fairly  easy  reading. 

With  regard  to  materials,  a  free  hand  has  been  laid  upon 
whatever  was  within  reach ;  and  although  it  has  been  thought 
unnecessary  to  give  detailed  references,  the  reader  will  be  able 
to  know,  in  a  general  way,  to  whom  credit  is  due.  The  author 
is  free  to  confess  his  regret,  however,  that  his  references  have 
been  so  meagre. 

The  reader  will  find  that  there  has  been  no  effort  to  keep 
back  or  underrate  the  conclusions  of  the  most  advanced  scien- 
tific thought,  but  that  the  burning  questions  between  the 
Empiricists  and  Transcendentalists  have  been  treated  with 
perfect  candor  and  openness. 

The  metaphysic  is,  in  the  main,  that  of  Lotze,  or  perhaps 
better,  the  Lotzian  phase  of  Kant.  The  "  Outlines  of  Meta- 
physic," lately  translated  by  Professor  Ladd  (Ginn  &  Com- 
pany), has  been  found  most  suitable  for  quotation,  and,  with 
the  exception  of  a  few  passages  from  the  "  Mikrokosmus,"  the 
extracts  from  Lotze  may  be  found  in  that  English  version. 

The  thanks  of  the  author  are  due  to  Dr.  Henry  H.  Donald- 
son, Professor  of  Neurology  in  Clark  University,  for  valuable 
assistance  in  revising  Chapters  III.  to  VII.  inclusive,  and  to 
John  Fearnley,  M.A.,  of  the  University  of  the  South,  for  efficient 
help  in  revising  proofs. 

If  this  book  shall  be  the  means  of  directing  speculative 
thought  more  in  the  lines  marked  out  by  Lotze,  it  will  have 

served  a  useful  purpose,  in  the  opinion  of 

THE  AUTHOR. 

SEWANEE,  TENN.,  January,  1891. 


CONTENTS. 


CHAPTER  I. 

PAGE 

SCOPE  AND  LIMITS  OF  SKEPTICISM i 

What  is  truth?  Incompleteness  of  Knowledge.  Lack  of  per- 
manence. Difficulties  of  arriving  at  ultimate  principles.  The  senses 
mendacious.  The  intellect  open  to  attack.  May  we  not  be  com- 
pelled to  see  things  as  they  are  not?  Practical  limits  of  doubt. 
Logical  limits.  Personality.  The  self  an  ultimate  fact.  The  '  One 
and  the  many.' 

CHAPTER  II. 

THE  MECHANICAL  BASIS  OF  PHENOMENA 1 1 

Modern  science  and  the  older  learning.  All  science  dominated 
by  mechanics.  Reducible  to  mathematical  forms.  Forestalled 
by  Descartes.  Hobbes.  Leibnitz.  Attitude  of  modern  physicists. 
Metaphysical  basis  of  science  obvious  to  all  thinkers. 


CHAPTER  III. 

PSYCHO-MECHANISMS 18 

The  cell-theory  discarded.  Protoplasmic  movement.  Max 
Schultze.  Huxley.  Uni-cellular  organisms.  Structural  develop- 
ment. Professor  Foster  quoted.  '  Metabolism.'  Nervous  system. 
Reflex  action.  Vivisection.  Cerebral  hemispheres.  Effects  of 
mutilations.  Caution.  Functions  of  different  brain-areas  not  cer- 
tainly determined. 


Viii  CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER   IV. 

PAGE 

PSYCHO-MECHANISMS  (continued} 28 

Professor  Romanes  quoted.  Experiments  in  vivisection.  Brain 
localizations.  Electrical  stimulations.  Rate  of  nerve  transmissions. 
Time  required  for  action  of  nerve-centres.  Rate  of  nerve-vibra- 
tions. The  sympathetic  system.  Functions.  Independent  of  voli- 
tion. Inhibition.  Brain-development.  Brain-mass.  Different 
nationalities. 

CHAPTER  V. 
THE  SENSES  —  TOUCH,  TASTE,  AND  SMELL 38 

The  specific  senses.  Number  indefinite.  Touch  fundamental. 
Pressure.  End-organs.  Threshold  value.  Weber's  and  Fech- 
ner's  law.  '  Local  signs.'  Pressure  spots.  Temperature  spots. 
End-organs  of  taste.  Stimuli.  Classification.  Sense  of  smell. 
End-organs  of  smell.  Stimuli.  Classification.  Muscular  sense. 
End-organs  of  motion. 

CHAPTER  VI. 
THE  SENSE  OF  HEARING 48 

The  ear.  Structure.  Corti's  organ.  Theories.  Physical  basis 
of  sound.  Intensity,  pitch,  quality.  Illustrations.  Partials. 
Tyndall  quoted.  Difference  in  people's  sensibilities.  Powers  of 
discrimination.  Range.  The  human  voice. 

CHAPTER  VII. 
THE  SENSE  OF  VISION 60 

Mechanism  of  the  eye.  Structure  of  the  retina.  End-organs. 
Rods  and  cones.  Mechanical  basis  of  vision.  Color.  '  Consecu- 
tive '  images.  Tone,  intensity,  saturation.  Yellow  spot. 

CHAPTER  VIII. 
CHASM  BETWEEN  MECHANISM  AND  CONSCIOUSNESS 69 

Physiological  research  with  respect  to  psycho-mechanisms.  Pro- 
toplasm net  pure  and  simple  matter.  Professor  Romanes  quoted. 


CONTENTS.  IX 


Darwin,  Huxley,  Tyndall,  and  Spencer  not  materialists.  Hobbes 
quoted.  The  problem  of  relation  between  physiology  and  con- 
sciousness. The  chasm  recognized.  Leaders  of  science  quoted. 


CHAPTER  IX. 
PERSONALITY  IN  ITS  PSYCHICAL  ASPECT 82 

Analysis  of  the  psychical  factor  of  personality.  The  three  funda- 
mental modes  of  the  self —  sensation,  cognition,  and  conation.  A 
tri-unity,  inseparable  but  logically  distinguishable.  Sub-conscious- 
ness. Unity  and  plurality. 

CHAPTER  X. 
DEVELOPMENT  OF  THE  PSYCHICAL  ASPECT  OF  PERSONALITY    ...    86 

The  relation  of  the  mechanical  and  psychical  factors.  Mutu- 
ally necessary.  The  human  organism  at  birth.  The  line  between 
elementary  consciousness  and  self-realization  shadowy.  Automatic 
action.  Basic-personality.  Evolution.  Continuity  and  discontin- 
uity. Instincts.  'Jelly-specks.'  Ants.  Chcetodon  rostratus.  The 
beaver.  Domestic  animals.  Inverse  order  of  intelligence  and 
instinct.  A  Evolution  as  well  as  an  evolution.  Instincts  gradu- 
ally replaced  in  ascending  order  of  nature. 

CHAPTER  XI. 
THE  CONCEPT- FORMING  PROCESS 97 

Muscular  co-ordination.  Education  of  the  organism.  Vital 
organs  not  under  control  of  will.  Analogous  psychical  conditions. 
Process  of  thought-development.  Like  and  unlike.  Discovery  of 
meaning.  Attention.  Retention.  Concepts.  Concept-masses. 
Apperception.  Thought  as  thought.  Language.  Introspection. 
'  Pure '  and  '  empirical  ego.'  '  One '  and  '  many.'  A  sense  of 
'knowing'  deeper  than  understanding.  Personality  antedates 
knowledge. 


CONTENTS. 
CHAPTER  XII. 

PAGE 

DIFFERENTIATIONS  OF  SELF.    MEMORY 109 

Consciousness.  Differentiation  of  feeling,  of  cognition,  of  will. 
An  end  ideally  first.  Self-development.  Perception.  Intuition. 
Ideas  in  the  mind  not  like  objects  without.  Space.  Time.  Memory. 
Mechanical  basis.  Objection  by  Lotze.  Complexity.  Illustration 
from  sound.  Phenomena  explicable  upon  theory  of  mechanical 
basis.  Dr.  Rush's  case.  Dr.  Carpenter's  Welshman.  Coleridge's 
case.  Power  to  recall  the  past.  Sudden  recollections.  Law  of 
association. 

CHAPTER  XIII. 

THE  IMAGINATION 126 

Definition.  Classification.  Cognitive  and  Sentient  imagination. 
Economic  and  Rational.  Artistic  and  Rhythmic.  Music.  Relation 
of  memory  and  imagination. 

CHAPTER  XIV. 

DREAMING.    SOMNAMBULISM.    HYPNOTISM 133 

Phenomenon  of  dreaming.  Sleep.  Do  we  always  dream  in 
sleep?  The  brain  a  thought-machine.  Consciousness  a  mere  phe- 
nomenon. The  brain  in  sleep.  Mosso's  observations.  Character 
of  dreams.  Nightmare.  Somnambulism.  Case  of  student  at 
Amsterdam.  Case  recorded  by  Dr.  Abercrombie.  German  monk. 
Muscular  feats.  Double  consciousness.  Case  of  young  lady  at 
West  Point.  Hypnotism.  Muscular  effects.  Dr.  Charcot  quoted. 
'  Suggestions.' 

CHAPTER  XV. 

THE  UNDERSTANDING 149 

A  technical  phase  of  cognition.  Faculty  of  Relations.  Thought 
proper.  The  lower  animals.  Pain.  The  logical  element  in  man. 
The  syllogism.  Dictum  of  Aristotle.  Deduction  and  Induction. 
Reasoning.  Reciprocal  processes. 


CONTENTS.  XI 

CHAPTER   XVI. 

PAGE 

THE  PURE  REASON 161 

Hypotheticals.  Intuitive  Knowledge.  Conditions  of  all  explicit 
thought.  Controversy  about  'Innate  Ideas.'  Empirical  Knowl- 
edge. Law  of  Identity.  Law  of  Contradiction.  Excluded  Middle. 
Its  questionable  use  in  certain  cases.  Hamilton.  Sufficient  Reason. 
Causality.  Hume.  Locke.  Leibnitz.  The  Laws  of  Motion.  All 
Science  based  upon  necessary  truths. 

CHAPTER   XVII. 

EMPIRICAL  AND  RATIONAL  TRUTH 175 

Conditional  syllogisms  and  law  of  sufficient  Reason.  No  law 
of  the  natural  world  above  doubt.  Not  so  in  thought.  'A  priori,' 
'original,'  etc.,  truths.  Necessity  the  characteristic.  Relation  of 
Induction  and  Deduction.  The  basis  of  Induction.  Intuition  of 
space.  The  Infinite  and  Absolute.  The  '  Philosophy  of  the  Con- 
ditioned.' 

CHAPTER  XVIII. 

THE  BEARING  OF  EMPIRICISM  ON  PERSONALITY 185 

Intuition  of  Time.  Time  the  ground  of  motion.  Space  of 
mass.  Cause  conditions  Space  and  Time.  Inertia.  Self-activity 
inconceivable  in  'Thing.'  Personality  the  only  ground  of  efficient 
cause.  '  Persistent  Force.'  Doubt  as  to  the  being  of  '  force '  as  an 
entity.  Professor  Tait  quoted.  Spencer's  effort  to  find  an  ultimate 
Reality.  Energy  implies  Personality.  Spencer's  position  sounder 
than  that  of  his  followers.  Quoted.  His  '  unknown '  known. 

CHAPTER  XIX. 

FEELING 199 

Classification.  Pain  and  pleasure.  Sensuous  feeling.  Her- 
bartian  scheme.  Intensity  and  quality  in  feeling.  Csenesthesia. 
Esoteric  and  exoteric  feeling.  The  one  working  from  within 
emerges  in  the  understanding;  the  other  built  up  through  the 
understanding.  Practical  bearing. 


Xll  CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER   XX. 

PAGE 

FEELING  (continued'} 211 

Rational  Feeling.  Esthetic  Feeling.  Beauty.  Periodic  motion. 
Music.  Vision.  Illusions.  Berkeley's  Theory  of  Vision.  Knowl- 
edge through  vision.  Cheselden's  case.  Other  cases.  Other 
problems. 

CHAPTER  XXI. 
FEELING  (continued^ 220 

Art.  Ideal  element.  Sculpture.  Painting.  Music.  Architec- 
ture. Poetry.  Evolution  of  ethical  feeling.  The  Good.  Ethical 
treatment  reserved  to  later  stage. 

CHAPTER   XXII. 
THE  WILL 229 

Elementary  effort.  Emerges  in  conscious  volition.  Much  that 
is  commonly  accounted  free,  mechanical.  Liberty  restricted  to 
Purposive  epoch.  Inhibitory  functions.  Directive  functions.  The 
office  of  the  will  in  developing  emotional  nature.  Development 
of  volitive  powers.  Moral  aspect  of  the  will.  Penitence. 

CHAPTER  XXIII. 
UNITY  OF  PERSONALITY 242 

Difficulties  of  question.  Unity  and  manifoldness.  Unity  a 
primordial  condition.  Inferior  organisms.  Protozoa.  Not  two 
worlds,  one  spiritual  and  the  other  physical.  Man  a  manifesta- 
tion of  one  person  in  two  modes.  The  psychical  and  mechanical 
inseparable.  Gross  and  sublimated  matter.  Visible  and  Invisible 
Universe.  The  '  Unseen  Universe '  quoted.  The  mechanical  mode 
has  its  only  title  to  reality  through  personality.  The  Cicada. 

CHAPTER  XXIV. 
WHAT  is  'THING'?    CONSTRUCTION  OF  MATTER 254 

Illusions.  What  underlies  phenomena?  Pure  Being.  'Thing' 
that  which  affects  and  is  affected.  The  position  of  Bishop  Berke- 


CONTENTS.  Xlll 

PAGE 

ley.  Quoted.  Analytical  physics  and  construction  of  matter. 
Boscovich's  theory.  Molecular  mechanics.  Clerk  Maxwell.  Pro- 
fessor Tait.  Sir  W.  Thompson's  '  vortical  atom.'  Difficulties.  Le 
Sage's  theory.  Ether.  The  physicists  driven  into  metaphysics 
Atoms  'manufactured  articles.' 

CHAPTER  XXV. 

MATHEMATICS  NOT  ULTIMATELY  EXACT 275 

Position  of  mathematics  in  scientific  inquiries.  Mathematical 
processes  develop  contradictions.  Surds.  Asymptotes.  Graphical 
illustration.  Cissoid  of  Diocles.  Other  cases.  Right  lines  inter- 
secting with  no  common  point.  The  concept '  infinity.'  Illustra- 
tion. 

CHAPTER  XXVI. 

THE  METAPHYSICAL  ATTITUDE  OF  CHANGE.    CAUSE 283 

The  problem  of  change.  Quotation  from  Plato.  The  problem 
of  causation.  Influence  '  passing  over.'  Doctrine  of '  Occasional- 
ism.' 'Pre-established  Harmony.'  'Divine  Assistance.'  Lotze 
quoted.  Causation,  as  such,  inexplicable. 

CHAPTER  XXVII. 

RELATION  OF  PERSONALITY  TO  SPACE  AND  TIME,  MASS  AND  MOTION  .  294 

The  concepts  Space  and  Time.  Subjective  ground  of  Mass  ?nd 
Motion.  Not  self-subsisting  realities.  Find  their  reality  in  Per- 
sonality. Reality  of  the  Cosmos  Personal.  Soundness  of  scientific 
methods.  No  truth  material.  Personality  necessary  to  Truth. 
Personality  not  a  phenomenon. 

CHAPTER  XXVIII. 

SOME  OF  THE  GREAT  METAPHYSICAL  SYSTEMS 300 

Idealism.  Fichte.  Lotze  quoted.  Schelling.  Hegelianism. 
Hegel  quoted.  Objections  to  absolute  Idealism.  Lotze's  position 
commended.  The  Supreme  Good. 


CONTENTS. 
CHAPTER  XXI 


CHAPTER  XXIX. 

PAGE 

ETHICAL 313 

Self-activity  necessary  to  morality.  No  liberty  in  Sensibility  or 
Cognition  as  such.  Choice.  Motives.  The 'Good.'  Obligation. 
Man  held  to  be  omniscient.  No  obligation  in  Selfness.  Altruism. 
How  the  will  of  the  Supreme  Good  is  Known.  The  '  Categorical 
Imperative.' 

CHAPTER  XXX. 

THE  NATURE  AND  FUNCTIONS  OF  CONSCIENCE 325 

The  admonitions  of  the  moral  monitor.  Conscience  discovers 
itself  only  upon  change  of  moral  purpose.  Analogy  between  the 
functions  of  conscience  and  inertia.  Analysis.  Illustration  of 
steamship.  Moral  momentum. 

CHAFFER  XXXI. 

THE  INFINITE  PERSONALITY 333 

Personal  good  implies  Personality  in  God.  The  Mosaic  account 
of  the  origin  of  evil  in  man.  Disobedience.  Obedience.  A  class 
of  theologians  faulted.  Conflict  and  agreement  of  the  Finite  and 
Infinite.  Theology  and  Religion.  Human  aspirations.  Quotation 
from  Mrs.  Browning.  Conclusion. 


TJHIVBRSIT7 


MECHANISM  AND  PERSONALITY. 


CHAPTER  I. 

SCOPE  AND  LIMITS  OF  SKEPTICISM. 

What  is  Truth?  Incompleteness  of  knowledge.  Lack  of  permanence. 
Difficulties  in  arriving  at  ultimate  principles.  The  senses  mendacious.  The 
intellect  open  to  attack.  May  we  not  be  compelled  to  see  things  as  they 
are  not?  Practical  limits  of  doubt.  Logical  limits.  Personality.  The  Self 
an  ultimate  fact.  '  The  one  and  the  many.' 

THE  lack  of  certitude  in  human  knowledge  and  human 
destiny  has  always  been  a  ground  of  anxiety  and  com- 
plaint. It  is  not  alone  a  Roman  Procurator,  who,  in  mockery 
or  despair,  asks  the  perplexing  question,  "What  is  Truth?"; 
but  every  man,  who  thinks  at  all,  must  find  the  inquiry  forcing 
itself  upon  his  attention  at  times ;  and,  too  often,  with  the  dismal 
refrain,  "Who  shall  show  us  any  good? "  And  yet  it  is  a  great 
mistake  to  inveigh  against  the  skeptical  element  in  man's  nature. 
A  little  reflection  must  make  it  apparent  that  doubt  is  a  neces- 
sary condition  of  knowledge  in  any  form.  Paradoxically  stated, 
if  we  could  know  at  once  and  perfectly,  we  should  not  know  at 
all.  It  is  not  by  light  alone  that  objects  are  seen  in  the  external 
world.  If  all  shade  and  shadow  were  removed,  there  might  be 
left  indeed  a  dead,  perfectly  even  and  unvarying  illumination ; 
but  all  sense  of  sight  would  be  gone,  and  the  external  world 
blotted  out.  Doubt  is  the  shadow  of  certitude,  without  which 
the  world  of  Truth  would  vanish  from  human  consciousness. 


2  MECHANISM    AND    PERSONALITY. 

It  must  be  confessed  that  the  extent  to  which  skepticism 
may  be  carried  is  bewildering  in  the  extreme ;  but  there  is  a 
limit  which  must  be  reached  in  thought  at  last  —  a  practical 
limit  unconsciously  forced  upon  the  unthinking  at  all  times, 
and  from  which  the  tide  turns  back  in  a  flood  of  unmistakable 
verity.  It  will  be  well  to  take  a  look  into  this  yawning  chasm 
of  doubt  and  denial,  that  we  may  be  more  sure  of  our  footing 
on  the  heights  of  the  true  and  abiding. 

In  the  first  place,  every  body  knows  how  incomplete  at  best 
is  all  human  knowledge.  Those  who  know  the  most  are  most 
impressed  with  a  sense  of  their  inadequacy  and  ignorance. 
Every  school-boy  knows  how  Socrates  could  not  understand 
the  declaration  of  the  oracle  that  he  was  the  wisest  man  in 
Athens,  until  it  came  over  him  that  it  must  be  because  he 
knew  his  own  ignorance ;  and  how  Sir  Isaac  Newton  could 
fancy  himself  a  little  child  gathering  shells  cast  up  by  the  sea, 
while  the  great  ocean  of  Truth  lay  spread  out  in  mystery  before 
him.  An  '  educated  ignorance '  is  but  another  expression  for 
the  highest  stage  of  human  knowledge. 

Then  again  the  little  that  one  does  know  has  no  fixedness 
and  permanence.  Every  day  brings  changes  —  every  varying 
mood  causes  modifications  and  colorings.  The  most  firmly 
settled  opinions  are  constantly  assailed  by  suggestions  of  doubt. 
No  statement  —  even  the  simplest  —  can  be  made  that  is  not 
open  to  question.  Suppose  one  should  attempt  to  teach  a 
child  something  of  the  law  of  gravitation.  He  lets  a  pebble 
drop  from  his  hand,  and  asks  the  child  why  it  falls,  explaining 
that  it  is  because  all  bodies  are  attracted  to  the  centre  cf  the 
earth.  The  explanation  is  not  true.  That  body  and  all  other 
bodies  are  attracted,  not  by  the  earth  alone,  but  by  the  sun 
and  moon  and  all  other  bodies.  He  corrects  himself,  enun- 
ciating the  law  of  gravitation  :  Every  body  attracts  every  other 
body  with  a  force  which  varies  inversely  as  the  square  of  the 
distance,  and  directly  as  the  mass.  False  again.  This  is  only 


SCOPE    AND    LIMITS    OF    SKEPTICISM.  3 

true  for  sensible  distances.  When  one  passes  within  molecu- 
lar limits,  the  law  undergoes  a  change,  —  perhaps  a  thousand 
alternations  of  attraction  and  repulsion ;  and  it  is  hopeless  to 
attempt  to  follow  it.  But  one  cannot  be  allowed  to  go  even  so 
far  in  peace.  What  is  a  body?  No  one  knows.  We  may  say 
it  is  that  which  is  made  up  of  particles,  which  are  composed 
of  molecules,  which  in  turn  are  composed  of  atoms.  But  what 
is  an  atom  ?  We  do  not  know.  What  is  a  molecule  ?  It  is  an 
hypothetical  combination  or  system  of  atoms,  —  that  is,  of  ele- 
ments which  nobody  can  know  nor  conceive  of.  Are  there  any 
atoms  ?  Nobody  knows.  It  is  not  only  doubted,  but  stoutly 
denied.  What  is  attraction  or  repulsion?  Nobody  knows. 
What  is  force?  Not  only  does  nobody  know;  but  the  ad- 
vanced mathematicians  and  physicists  are  so  seriously  skepti- 
cal as  to  the  existence  of  any  such  '  thing '  that  they  are  doing 
their  best  to  banish  the  word  from  the  vocabulary  of  scientific 
terms.  Thus  there  is  not  much  left  of  the  definition  of  gravi- 
tation ;  but  even  what  remains  is  equally  open  to  doubt. 

It  must  be  confessed  that  the  skeptic  has  got  on  pretty  well 
already  in  his  work  of  demolition  ;  but  he  has  broad  fields  yet 
before  him  for  the  exercise  of  his  destructive  propensity.  He 
attacks  the  entire  external  world,  and  denies  its  existence. 
Take  any  object,  as  the  long-suffering  tree  of  the  metaphysi- 
cians :  how  do  we  know  that  it  exists  ?  We  see  it.  See  what  ? 
The  color  —  light  and  shade.  But  are  these  the  tree  ?  No  ; 
they  are  the  sensations  produced  through  the  eye  by  modifica- 
tions of  light.  Then  they  are  something  which  the  tree  effects  ; 
not  what  it  is. 

But  it  will  be  said,  We  can  touch  it.  Yes,  and  what  do  we 
find?  That  it  is  hard,  rough,  cold  and  all  that :  —  but  these  are 
not  the  tree.  They  are  states  or  conditions,  —  called  '  proper- 
ties '  or  '  accidents  '  —  and  so  we  may  go  on  through  every 
possible  test  of  the  senses,  and  we  shall  only  find  other 
properties,  or  accidents,  no  one  of  which,  nor  all  of  them  com- 


4  MECHANISM    AND    PERSONALITY. 

bined,  can  be  the  tree.  The  skeptic  still  asks,  what  is  '  it '  — 
what  is  '  The-thing-in-itself  ? ' 

He  asks  further,  When  one  sees  objects  in  a  dream,  are  they 
real?  Have  they  'thingness'  which  supports  the  properties 
or  attributes,  such  as  color,  shape,  size  and  whatever  else  they 
seem  to  have  ?  The  sleeper  thinks  so  at  the  time.  Why  may 
it  not  be  that  we  only  think  they  have  all  these  in  our  waking 
moments?  Or,  how  do  we  know  which  are  our  waking 
moments?  Why  may  not  the  dream-world  be  the  reality, 
and  that  which  we  call  the  real  world  be  the  dream  ? 

But  even  yet  the  skeptic  is  not  satisfied.  He  has  cast  sus- 
picion upon  the  external  world ;  he  next  attacks  the  thought- 
world. 

One  must  get  all  material  of  thought  through  experience, 
and  experience  must  come  through  the  senses.  But  the  senses 
are  not  infallible.  By  an  artful  combination  of  mirrors,  the 
most  successful  delusions  are  practised  by  the  modern  magi- 
cian. Every  body  is  misled  from  time  to  time  by  tricks  of 
vision.  The  ear  is  even  more  fallible,  and  all  the  senses,  even 
touch,  are  constantly  deceived.  Information  received  through 
fallible  sources,  from  the  nature  of  the  case,  must  be  open  to 
suspicion. 

But  the  mental  powers  and  operations  are  themselves  mutable 
and  uncertain.  Memory  cannot  be  trusted  implicitly.  We 
find  ourselves  constantly  mistaken  in  our  recollection  of  things 
and  events;  and  memory  is  absolutely  necessary  to  any  sort  of 
knowledge.  But  even  if  it  were  never  caught  limping,  how  do 
we  know  that  it  is  not  always  persistently  and  consistently  false  ? 
What  can  we  do  but  simply  take  what  it  tells  us  of  the  past  as 
true  without  possibility  of  verification  ? 

But  in  point  of  fact,  all  our  ideas  and  opinions  have  in 
them  undeniable  sources  of  change  and  uncertainty.  The 
mind  itself  is  not  the  same  from  youth  to  age,  and  no  one 
can  tell  at  what  stage  it  can  best  be  trusted.  Its  grasp  and 


SCOPE    AND    LIMITS    OF    SKEPTICISM.  5 

flexibility  undergo  daily  changes,  through  variation  in  health 
—  through  fits  of  passion,  moods  of  despondency,  the  use  of 
intoxicants  and  the  effects  of  environment.  All  of  these  jang- 
ling voices  cannot  be  true,  and  how  can  we  be  sure  of  any  one 
of  them?  Then  again,  one's  way  of  thinking  is  greatly  modi- 
fied by  education,  religion,  birth,  manners  and  customs,  inter- 
est, and  a  thousand  external  circumstances.  Some  of  these,  or 
all  of  them  must  be  distorting ;  and  how  shall  we  say  that  the 
Hindoo  mother,  the  Howling  Dervish,  and  the  modern  Thug, 
are  not  all  equally  justified  in  their  conclusions? 

The  skeptic  is  not  done  yet.  He  asks  —  especially  in  the  per- 
son of  certain  pseudo-scientists  —  why  should  not  the  mind,  with 
all  thought,  be  but  an  effect,  like  the  blaze  of  a  candle,  or  any 
other  mechanical  or  chemical  reaction?  We  can  trace  the 
motion  from  any  external  stimulus  along  the  sensory  and  motor 
nerves  to  and  from  the  nerve  centres  in  the  brain, — we  can 
localize  these  centres  and  note  their  action :  what  more  is 
needed  ?  If  the  quiet,  restful  earth,  and  all  that  goes  on  in  it  is 
but  the  effect  of  mass  and  motion,  why  should  we  look  further 
for  an  explanation  of  thought  ?  Call  it  a  phenomenon  of  mat- 
ter and  be  content ! 

Or  again,  —  and  one  can  go  no  farther — even  admitting  that 
there  is  an  infallible  criterion  of  certitude,  and  that  in  spite  of 
all  that  has  been  said,  one  could  find  it,  how  do  we  know  that 
it  would  reveal  that  which  is  real  —  that  the  power  behind 
nature  and  all  phenomena  has  not  so  made  us  that  we  are  com- 
pelled to  see  things  quite  otherwise  than  they  are  —  that  what 
we  take  for  truth,  and  must  take  for  truth  is  after  all  a  delusion, 
unreal  and  false?  The  objects  of  the  external  world  when 
seen  through  colored  glasses,  take  the  color  of  the  glasses; 
why  may  not  the  whole  thought-world  appear  what  it  is  not, 
because  it  is  seen  through  a  medium  which  is  forced  upon  us, 
and  which  gives  a  fictitious  tone  and  character  to  truth ;  and 
so  presents  it  to  us  as  what  it  is  not  ? 


6  MECHANISM   AND    PERSONALITY. 

Even  such  a  radical  position  as  this  is  possible,  and  as  an 
hypothesis  it  is  irrefutable.  We  should  have  to  be  given  another 
set  of  senses  with  which  to  examine  this  hyper-sensuous  world, 
and  compare  the  results  with  our  present  knowledge,  before 
we  could  know  whether  we  should  see  things  as  we  do  now, 
if  we  were  angels  or  inhabitants  of  Mars  or  some  other  possible 
world.  But  even  then  we  should  only  know  that  our  new 
senses  made  things  look  to  us  as  they  would  to  an  angel  or  a 
Martian ;  but  the  question  would  again  obtrude  itself —  Does  the 
angel  or  the  Martian  see  things  as  they  are  ?  and  so  it  would 
again  and  again,  if  we  had  a  thousand  sets  of  senses.  No  one 
set  could  do  more  than  our  present  senses  do,  —  that  is,  do  just 
what  is  their  business  to  do.  The  very  highest  created  being  — 
though  he  be  only  less  than  the  All- Father,  can  know  only  as 
his  powers  and  capacities  enable  him  to  know ;  and  we  are  in 
no  worse  case.  He  would  know  more,  doubtless,  but  he  could 
not  know  with  greater  certainty.  He  too  could  doubt,  —  doubt 
as  radically  as  man,  —  doubt  being,  as  we  have  seen,  an  abso- 
lutely necessary  condition  of  knowledge  to  any  finite  intelli- 
gence. If,  then,  we  do  not  demand  to  be  as  Gods,  —  if  we  are 
to  remain  as  created  beings,  —  if  there  are  to  be  created  beings 
at  all,  there  is  no  truth,  —  there  can  be  no  truth  except  as  it  is 
made  known  or  revealed  to  the  creature  as  he  is,  with  and 
through  the  limitations  which  make  him  a  creature.  That  is 
a  false  and  absurd  philosophy  which  attempts  to  carry  one  out 
of  the  scope  of  the  actual  and  asks  how  things  are  or  could  be, 
to  another  order  of  beings  than  man.  We  are  men,  and  in  the 
man-world ;  and  the  very  truth  is  the  truth  that  man  knows,  or 
can  know. 

But  it  will  be  remembered  that  I  said  in  the  beginning  of 
this  discussion,  that  there  is  a  practical  limit  to  doubt  uncon- 
sciously forced  upon  the  unthinking  at  all  times.  By  the  neces- 
sity of  man's  nature,  he  cannot  live  in  utter  doubt  and  negation. 
After  the  sum  of  all  actual  doubt  is  reckoned  up,  there  remains 


SCOPE    AND    LIMITS    OF    SKEPTICISM.  7 

in  his  practical  life  a  far  vaster  sum  of  unquestioned  reality, 
through  which,  indeed,  the  very  doubt  and  his  own  existence 
are  made  possible.  Question  and  deny  as  we  may,  we  have 
faith  in  our  senses ;  and  we  show  it  every  moment  of  our  lives. 
There  is  no  man  who  does  not  thoroughly  believe  that  the  earth 
is  under  his  feet,  and  that  if  he  does  not  take  food  he  will  die. 
There  never  was  a  man  who  did  not  know  that  there  were 
other  men  about  him,  and  that  there  were  rights  and  duties 
growing  out  of  the  relations  between  them.  There  never  was 
a  man  who,  uncertain  about  a  fact,  did  not  know  that  if  his 
means  of  investigation  were  sufficiently  enlarged,  the  doubt 
would  be  removed.  Granted  that  the  senses  do  sometimes 
mislead  us,  does  not  this  very  knowledge  emerge  from  the  far 
deeper  knowledge  that  they  commonly  do  not  ?  and  are  we  not 
certain  that  if  due  precaution  were  taken,  —  if  the  obstructing 
or  misleading  elements  were  removed,  the  deception  would  go 
too  ?  Is  not  the  universal  and  necessary  consciousness  that  we 
must  not  always  trust  the  senses  a  certainty?  and  does  it  not 
carry  with  it  the  further  and  deeper  conviction  that  there  is  an 
infallible  criterion,  if  we  can  only  be  sufficiently  informed  ?  As 
Jouffroy,  whose  line  of  thought  I  have  in  good  part  followed, 
says,  "  The  cause  of  our  faculties  deceiving  us,  is  not  the  want 
of  a  criterion  to  distinguish  the  proper  from  the  improper 
exercise  of  them,  but  carelessness  or  haste  in  not  using  this 
criterion." 

With  regard  to  the  question  of  the  accidents,  or  properties 
of  bodies,  and  that  '  thing-in-itself '  which  supports  them,  I 
have  only  to  say  here  that  the  difficulty  is  one  which  presents 
itself  only  to  the  philosopher,  and  will  come  up  for  considera- 
tion further  on.  People  at  large  are  not  troubled  with  any  such 
abstraction,  but  innocently  assume  as  the  philosopher  does  also, 
when  he  is  not  philosophizing,  that  what  lies  spread  out  before 
him,  as  land  and  sea  and  sky,  are  simply  what  they  seem.  I 
also  pass  for  the  present  that  great  domain  of  necessary  truths, 


8  MECHANISM    AND    PERSONALITY. 

or  presuppositions  of  our  nature,  as  we  shall  be  able  to  get  at 
it  better  further  on. 

So  much  for  the  practical  limits  of  skepticism^  Let  us  now 
consider  briefly  the  question  from  a  purely  logical  standpoint. 
We  are  told  that  Descartes,  the  father  of  modern  speculative 
thought,  shut  himself  out  from  the  world,  and  deliberately  set 
himself  to  the  work  of  carrying  doubt  to  its  direst  limit.  He 
found  that  there  is  one  fact  which  stands  out  clear  and  distinct  in 
the  midst  of  one's  most  determined  effort  at  denial,  —  and  that 
is,  the  fact  of  one's  own  existence.  Doubt  as  I  may,  I  cannot 
doubt  that  I  doubt.  The  ego  is  necessarily  posited  or  affirmed 
in  the  very  act  of  doubting.  Consciousness  is  beforehand  in 
forcing  the  knowledge  of  self  upon  me  in  the  act  of  construing 
the  notion  of  denial  in  any  form,  and  in  enunciating  my  con- 
clusion the  "self"  is  affirmed  as  a  necessary  condition:  it  is 
/  that  doubt. 

The  formula  in  which  Descartes  embodied  this  fundamental 
verity,  *  I  think,  therefore  I  am  '  (cogito  ergo  sum}  — has  been 
much  criticised  and  discussed.  There  is  no  reasonable  ques- 
tion that  the  philosopher  intended  it  not  as  an  argument,  but 
as  an  incontestable  postulate.  But  it  is  a  matter  of  no  moment 
to  us  here  what  he  may  have  intended ;  the  truth  remains.  We 
need  only  the  two  words,  '  I  doubt.'  They  cover  the  whole 
range  of  skepticism ;  and  it  is  logically  impossible  to  entertain 
or  formulate  the  expression  of  any  sort  of  doubt  whatever  with- 
out positing  incontestably  the  belief  on  the  part  of  the  doubter, 
in  his  own  existence. 

But  this  assertion,  —  'I  doubt,'  —  which  lies  at  the  threshold 
of  all  questionings,  is  pregnant  with  a  further  truth,  equally  im- 
portant, and  equally  obvious.  One  could  never  have  the  slight- 
est consciousness  of  self  without  the  consciousness  of  the  not- 
self.  If  the  ego  were  in  a  state  of  absolute  isolation  —  a  unit, 
without  that  which  is  other  than  itself,  even  its  own  parts  or 
limitations,  there  could  be  no  possible  variation  in  its  modes 


SCOPE    AND    LIMITS    OF    SKEPTICISM.  $ 

or  states,  it  could  have  no  possible  experience  —  there  could  be 
nothing  to  think  about,  and  so  no  thought  whatever,  and  no 
consciousness  of  existence.  Thus  the  knowledge  of  the  self 
carries  with  it  necessarily,  the  knowledge  of  the  non-self  with 
its  unending  phenomena.  And  thus  that  flood  of  doubt,  which 
we  so  freely  admitted  in  the  beginning,  returns  upon  us  in  an 
overwhelming  sense  of  certainty.  It  does  not  yet  appear  what 
the  non-ego  is;  but  that  it  is  somewhat  we  cannot-deny.  We 
still  know  that  the  senses  are  not  always  to  be  relied  upon,  but 
we  know  also,  that  they  are  bearing  their  testimony,  and  it 
remains  for  the  self  to  weigh  it  and  determine.  What  we  do 
know,  and  must  know  without  question,  is  that  we  think  there 
is  an  external  world ;  and  what  one  thinks  and  cannot  by  any 
possibility  not  think,  one  knows.  Every  sensation  is  at  least  a 
sensation,  and  in  so  far  real :  whether  the  external  stimulus 
be  indeed  what  we  take  it  to  be  is  quite  another  matter.  It  is 
just  in  this  fact  that  flexibility  is  left  us,  and  that  we  are  saved 
from  dead  mechanism  —  a  dire  necessity  without  the  possi- 
bility of  thought  or  action.  Of  these  two  factors  —  the  self  and 
that  which  is  not  self  —  it  will  be  seen,  —  and  it  cannot  be  logi- 
cally disputed,  —  that  the  positive,  living  factor  is  the  self.  It 
would  be  premature  to  enter  upon  a  discussion  of  the  relation 
of  these  two  factors  at  this  stage  of  our  investigation.  It  is 
enough  to  emphasize  the  Tact  that  the  world  of  mass  and 
motion  can  be  known  only  in  thought ;  and  that  thought  is  the 
distinguishing  characteristic  of  the  self. 

But  now,  what  are  we  to  understand  by  the  ego,  the  me,  the 
self?  First,  negatively  (speaking  for  myself),  I  do  not  mean 
the  body,  nor  the  brain,  nor  any  special  organ  of  the  body —  I 
do  not  mean  the  memory,  nor  imagination,  understanding,  will, 
or  consciousness,  nor  even  what  is  commonly  called  mind  or 
soul.  I  do  mean  all  these  —  the  whole  self  —  all  that  goes  to 
make  up  what  we  know  as  '  person  '  —  in  one  sense  compounded 
of  parts,  in  another  and  higher  sense,  absolutely  partless  —  a  unit, 


MECHANISM    AND    PERSONALITY. 


not  susceptible  of  any  sort  of  fraction  or  division.  We  see  in 
it  a  living  exemplification  of  the  problem  about  which  philoso- 
phy, ancient  and  modern,  has  ever  busied  itself — the  co-exist- 
ence of  the  '  one  and  the  many.'  As  'many  '  it  is  composed 
of  two  chief  factors  —  a  marvellous  mechanism,  and  an  incom- 
prehensible and  dominant  psychical  energy :  as  '  one '  it  is  a 
living  and  ineffable  personality.  The  nature  and  existence  of 
the  mechanism,  and  of  the  psychic  factor  are  known  only 
through  the  personality  which  for  each  and  every  one  of  us  is 
the  one  primordial  and  necessary  fact  of  the  universe. 


THE    MECHANICAL    BASIS    OF    PHENOMENA.  II 


CHAPTER   II. 

THE    MECHANICAL   BASIS   OF   PHENOMENA. 

Modern  science  and  the  older  learning.  All  science  dominated  by 
mechanics.  Reducible  to  mathematical  forms.  Forestalled  by  Descar- 
tes. Hobbes.  Leibnitz.  Attitude  of  modern  physicists.  Metaphysical 
basis  of  science  obvious  to  all  thinkers. 

IT  is  not  surprising  that  men's  minds  should  be  in  some  fer- 
ment as  to  what  is  true,  when  one  reflects  upon  the  universal 
upturning  in  physical  science,  in  the  last  two  or  three  genera- 
tions. Few  facts,  to  say  nothing  of  theories,  are  left  unmolested. 
The  old  learning  is  so  tattered  and  torn  as  to  be  no  longer 
respectable.  New.  discoveries  and  new  hypotheses  have  crowded 
each  other  with  such  rapidity,  that  one  feels  fairly  dazed  when 
one  thinks  of  it.  Science  has  done  such  a  mighty  work  already, 
and  gives  promise  of  so  much  to  come,  that  it  is  not  wonderful 
it  has  so  fully  engaged  the  attention  of  the  age.  It  is  not 
strange  that  so  many  hands  seize  the  scalpel  and  microscope,  — 
the  battery  and  balances  to  push  on  the  work,  and  that  so 
many  brave  hearts  put  their  trust  in  them  as  the  only  sure  test 
of  truth,  —  they  are  so  definite  and  practical.  It  is  quite  natural 
that  they  who  are  once  taken  with  the  experimental  method 
should  think  they  have  no  time,  and  show  so  plainly  that  they 
have  no  patience,  with  the  old  hair-splitting,  foggy  metaphysic. 
And  yet  it  will  hardly  do  to  cast  contempt  upon  the  old  thinkers. 
The  seductive  path  of  positive  science  leads  off  into  regions 
of  speculative  thought  at  numberless  points  ;  and  if  Science  does 
not  already  know  that  she  is  caught  in  the  toils  of  metaphysics, 
it  is  only  because  she  does  not  yet  fully  recognize  her  contact 


12  MECHANISM   AND    PERSONALITY. 

with  the  ultimate.  Experimental  science  has  been  a  trifle 
heady  perhaps  in  taking  leave  of  the  old  thinkers  in  the 
beginning ;  and  she  need  not  be  surprised  to  find  herself  over- 
taken by  them  once  more.  Her  revelations  have  rarely  proved 
to  be  new,  except  in  mere  details,  or  new  only  in  the  sense  that 
the  multitude  knows  little  of  what  the  philosophers  of  the  past 
have  clearly  seen,  and  definitely  announced. 

This  could  be  abundantly  verified  by  a  study  of  even  Greek 
philosophy,  but  that  would  carry  us  too  far  afield.  We  must 
content  ourselves  with  a  brief  reference  to  the  thinkers  of 
modern  times,  but  yet  far  enough  in  the  past  to  have  preceded 
by  many  years  the  scientific  flood  which  seems  to  be  sweeping 
everything  before  it. 

The  central  principle  of  modern  physics  may  be  stated  as 
follows  :  "  All  variations  of  matter,  or  all  diversity  of  its  forms, 
depend  on  motion  "  :  but  these  are  not  the  words  of  an  ana- 
lytical physicist  of  our  day,  but  of  Descartes.  He  saw,  as 
Professor  Huxley  says,  that  the  discoveries  of  Galileo  meant 
that  the  universe  is  governed  by  mechanical  laws ;  while  those 
of  Harvey  made  it  equally  clear  that  the  same  laws  preside 
over  the  operations  of  that  portion  of  the  world  which  is  nearest 
to  us,  namely  our  own  bodies.  In  his  essay,  "Trait£  de 
rHomme,"  he  arrives  at  "that  purely  mechanical  view  of 
vital  phenomena  towards  which  modern  physiology  is  striving." 
Speaking  of  the  mechanism  of  the  circulation  of  the  blood,  he 
says,  that  the  motion  is  as  much  the  necessary  result  of  the 
structure  of  the  heart,  as  that  of  a  clock  is  of  the  "  force,  the 
situation,  and  the  figure,  of  its  weight,  and  of  its  wheels."  Nor 
does  he  stop  with  this.  "The  animal  spirits  "  he  says  "resem- 
ble a  very  subtle  fluid,  or  a  very  pure  and  vivid  flame,  and  are 
continually  generated  in  the  heart,  and  ascend  to  the  brain  as 
a  sort  of  reservoir.  Hence  they  pass  into  the  nerves,  and  are 
distributed  to  the  muscles,  causing  contraction,  or  relaxation, 
according  to  the  quantity." 


THE  MECHANICAL  BASIS  OF  PHENOMENA.      13 

He  goes  into  details  and  describes  the  animal  body  as  an 
automaton,  —  explaining  the  action  of  what  we  now  call  stimuli 
upon  the  sense-organs.  He  illustrates  his  meaning  by  likening 
the  action  to  the  mechanism  of  certain  grottos  and  fountains 
in  royal  gardens.  "  The  nerves  of  the  machine  "  —  he  is 
speaking  of  an  hypothetical  human  organism  —  "  which  I  am 
describing  may  very  well  be  compared  to  the  pipes  of  these 
water-works  ;  its  muscles  and  its  tendons  to  the  other  various 
engines  and  springs  which  seem  to  move  them  ;  its  animal 
spirits  to  the  water  which  impels  them,  of  which  the  heart  is 
the  fountain  ;  while  the  cavities  of  the  brain  are  the  central 
office.  .  .  .  The  external  objects  which,  by  their  mere  pres- 
ence, act  upon  the  organs  of  the  senses,  and  which  by  this 
means  determine  the  corporal  machine  to  move  in  many  dif- 
ferent ways,  according  as  the  parts  of  the  brain  are  arranged, 
are  like  the  strangers  who,  entering  into  some  of  the  grottos  of 
these  water-works,  unconsciously  cause  the  movements  which 
take  place  in  their  presence.  For  they  cannot  enter  without 
treading  upon  certain  planks  so  arranged  that,  for  example,  if 
they  approach  a  bathing  Diana,  they  cause  her  to  hide  among 
the  reeds  ;  and  if  they  attempt  to  follow  her,  they  see  approach- 
ing a  Neptune  who  threatens  them  with  his  trident  ;  or  if  they 
try  some  other  way,  they  cause  some  monster  who  vomits 
water  into  their  faces,  to  dart  out  ;  or  like  contrivances,  accord- 
ing to  the  fancy  of  the  engineers  who  made  them.  And  lastly, 
when  the  rational  soul  is  lodged  in  the  machine,  it  will  have 
its  principal  seat  in  the  brain,  and  will  take  the  place  of  the 
engineer,  who  ought  to  be  in  that  part  of  the  works  with  which 
all  the  pipes  are  connected,  when  he  wishes  to  increase,  or  to 
slacken,  or  in  some  way  to  alter  their  movements."  He  goes 
on  further  even  than  this,  and  includes  in  his  mechanism  the 
organs  of  "  common  sense  and  imagination  "  —  indeed  the  most 
pronounced  mechanical  physiologist  could  go  no  further.  Pro- 


OF  THE 

WVHRSIT 


14  MECHANISM    AND    PERSONALITY. 

fessor  Huxley  declares  that  the  spirit  of  what  he  says  "  is  exactly 
that  of  the  most  advanced  physiology  of  the  present  day." 

Thomas  Hobbes,  a  very  different  thinker,  clearly  and  in  terms 
anticipated  the  results  of  the  latest  study  in  Physiological  Psy- 
chology. He  says  :  —  "  All  the  qualities  called  sensible  are,  in 
the  object  which  causeth  them,  but  so  many  motions  of  the 
matter  by  which  it  presseth  on  our  organs  diversely.  Neither  in 
us  that  are  pressed  are  they  anything  else  than  divers  motions ; 
for  motion  produceth  nothing  but  motion.  .  .  .  The  cause  of 
sense  is  the  external  body  or  object,  which  presseth  the  organ 
proper  to  each  sense,  either  immediately,  as  in  taste  and  touch, 
or  mediately,  as  in  hearing,  seeing  and  smelling ;  which  pres- 
sure, by  the  mediation  of  the  nerves,  and  other  strings  and 
membranes  of  the  body,  continued  inwards  to  the  brain  and 
heart,  causeth  there  a  resistance,  or  counter- pressure  or  endeav- 
our .  .  .  and  because  going,  speaking,  and  the  like  voluntary 
motions,  depend  always  upon  a  precedent  thought  of  whither, 
which  way  and  what ;  it  is  evident  that  the  imagination  [or 
idea]  is  the  first  internal  beginning  of  all  voluntary  motion. 
And  although  unstudied  men  do  not  conceive  any  motion  at  all 
to  be  there,  when  the  thing  moved  is  invisible  ;  or  the  space  it 
is  moved  in  is,  for  the  shortness  of  it,  insensible ;  yet  that  doth 
not  hinder  but  that  such  motions  are.  These  small  beginnings 
of  motion,  within  the  body  of  man,  before  they  appear  in  walk- 
ing, speaking,  striking,  and  other  visible  actions,  are  commonly 
called  endeavour." 

Professor  Romanes,  the  distinguished  English  physicist,  in 
commenting  on  this  passage  which  he  quotes  in  his  Rede  Lec- 
ture of  '85,  at  the  University  of  Cambridge,  declares  it  to  be  in 
perfect  accord  with  the  best  scientific  thought  of  to-day  —  that 
it  has  now  been  proved  beyond  doubt  to  be  only  in  virtue  of 
the  invisible  movements  which  he  inferred  that  the  nervous 
system  is  enabled  to  perform  its  functions. 

But  while  nothing  could  be  more  clear  than  the  position  of 


THE    MECHANICAL    BASIS    OF    PHENOMENA.  15 

Hobbes  with  regard  to  the  mechanical  constitution  of  the  human 
body,  he  was  neither  original  nor  alone  in  his  declarations.  He 
was  not  only  anticipated  some  two  thousand  years  by  Heraclitus 
and  Empedocles  and  Democritus,  and  on  down  through  Epicu- 
rus and  Lucretius,  but  as  we  have  seen  Descartes  had  forestalled 
him  by  many  years,  and  Leibnitz  and  Huygens,  both  of  whom 
were  quite  as  pronounced  on  the  subject,  were  his  contempora- 
ries. Leibnitz  says  :  "  Everything  in  nature  is  effected  mechani- 
cally " ;  and  he  carried  the  doctrine  of  motion  into  all  phases 
of  his  philosophy  as  a  necessary  postulate.  Huygens,  the  father 
of  the  undulatory  theory  of  light,  declares  that  "all  natural 
effects  are,  and  must  be,  conceived  mechanically,  unless  we  are 
to  renounce  all  hope  of  understanding  anything  in  physics."  A 
little  later,  but  years  before  the  descent  of  the  present  scientific 
avalanche,  Father  Boscovich  put  forth  his  theory  of  the  con- 
struction of  matter,  in  which  motion  and  force  alone  give  rise 
to  all  the  phenomena  of  substance. 

It  was  not,  however,  until  after  Priestly,  Lavoisier,  Dalton  and 
the  rest  of  them  gave  the  world  a  new  chemistry  —  not  until  after 
the  announcement  of  the  atomic  theory,  the  establishment  of 
the  doctrine  of  the  conservation  of  energy,  and  the  mechanical 
equivalent  of  heat,  that  the  latest  phase  of  this  venerable  theory 
burst  upon  the  thought  of  the  world  with  its  brilliant  achieve- 
ments. Kirchoff,  Helmholtz,  Clerk  Maxwell,  and  a  host  of  other 
mathematicians  and  physicists  took  up  the  inquiry,  and  seem 
to  have  settled  the  matter  finally  upon  a  mechanical  basis  as 
well  in  organic  as  in  inorganic  nature.  The  conclusions  of 
Wundt  may  be  taken  as  the  accepted  attitude  in  physiology,  the 
most  subtle  domain  of  nature,  and  perhaps  the  ultimate  reach  of 
mechanics.  He  says  :  "  The  view  that  has  now  become  domi- 
nant (in  physiology),  and  is  ordinarily  designated  as  the  mechani- 
cal or  physical  view,  has  its  origin  in  the  causal  conception, 
long  prevalent  in  the  kindred  departments  of  natural  science, 
which  regards  nature  as  a  single  chain  of  causes  and  effects 


l6  MECHANISM    AND    PERSONALITY. 

wherein  the  ultimate  laws  of  causal  action  are  the  laws  of 
mechanics.  Physiology  thus  appears  as  a  branch  of  applied 
physics,  its  problems  being  a  reduction  of  vital  phenomena  to 
general  physical  laws,  and  thus  ultimately  to  the  fundamental 
laws  of  mechanics." 

The  statement  of  Du  Bois  Reymond  is  equally  clear  and 
positive  —  "  Natural  science  more  accurately  expressed,  scien- 
tific cognition  of  nature,  or  cognition  of  the  natural  world  by 
the  aid,  and  in  the  sense  of  theoretical  physical  science  —  is  a 
reduction  of  the  changes  in  the  material  world  to  motions  of 
atoms  caused  by  central  forces  independent  of  time,  or  as  a 
resolution  of  the  phenomena  of  nature  into  atomic  mechanics. 
It  is  a  fact  of  psychological  experience,  that,  whenever  such  a 
reduction  is  successfully  effected,  our  craving  for  causality  is, 
for  the  time,  wholly  satisfied.  The  propositions  of  mechanics 
are  reducible  to  mathematical  forms,  and  carry  with  them  the 
same  apodictic  certainty  which  belongs  to  the  propositions  of 
mathematics.  When  the  changes  in  the  material  world  have 
been  reduced  to  a  constant  sum  of  potential  and  kinetic' energy 
inherent  in  a  constant  mass  of  matter,  there  is  nothing  left  in 
these  changes  for  explanation." 

There  is  no  disposition  on  the  part  of  any  school  of  thought 
of  fair  respectability  to  question  the  general  correctness  of  the 
statement  embodied  in  the  above  quotations,  nor  to  deny  that 
the  position  of  science  on  the  general  subject  is,  so  far  as  it 
goes,  a  just  explanation  of  the  phenomena  of  nature ;  but  we 
shall  see,  I  hope,  that  there  is  a  long  way  beyond  the  utmost 
reach  of  mass  and  motion,  upon  which  it  can  take  no  step. 
It  is  not  in  the  least  surprising,  however,  that  people  who  are 
unread  in  philosophy  —  and  that  means  all  except  one  here 
and  there  —  should  feel  themselves  in  a  state  of  spiritual 
asphyxia  when  they  comprehend  the  sweep  of  the  mechanical 
claims ;  and  the  case  is  made  apparently  far  worse  when  the 
further  researches  of  Darwin  and  Wallace,  and  that  host  of 


THE  MECHANICAL  BASIS  OF  PHENOMENA.      I/ 

able  collaborators  in  the  evolutionary  processes  of  nature  are 
taken  into  account. 

It  does  not  seem  necessary  to  our  present  purpose,  at  least  at 
this  point,  to  touch  upon  what  is  commonly  known  as  the 
Darwinian  theory;  though  I  may  remark  in  passing  that  a 
sound  philosophy  has  no  quarrel  with  it  in  its  general  aspects, 
nor  as  an  explanation  from  the  mechanical  side  of  the  phe- 
nomena about  which  it  is  concerned.  We  shall  see,  however, 
that  it  is  seriously  at  fault  in  leaving  out  of  sight  or  making 
little  of  the  primordial  factor  of  personality  in  its  explanation  of 
the  processes  of  nature. 

It  is  necessary  that  we  should  try  to  get  a  right  notion  of 
the  latest  results  of  the  mechanical  theory  in  its  physiological 
aspect,  not  to  combat  it  in  any  wise,  but  that  we  may  be  helped 
to  right  conclusions  in  the  difficult  inquiry  as  to  the  relations  of 
Mechanism  and  Personality. 


1 8  MECHANISM    AND    PERSONALITY. 


CHAPTER   III. 

PSYCHO-MECHANISMS. 

The  cell-theory  modified.  Protoplasmic  movement.  Max  Schultze. 
Huxley.  Uni-cellular  organisms.  Structural  development.  Professor 
Foster  quoted.  '  Metabolism.'  Nervous  system.  Reflex  action.  Vivi- 
section. Cerebral  hemispheres.  Effects  of  mutilations.  Caution.  Func- 
tions of  different  brain-areas  not  certainly  determined. 

THE  cell- theory  of  physiology  worked  its  way  into  favor 
gradually  under  the  improved  use  of  the  microscope. 
From  about  1835  ^  rapidly  developed,  until  it  culminated  in 
the  hands  of,  perhaps,  Max  Schultze  in  1854. 

This  theory  taught  that  all  the  parts  of  an  animal  or  vegetable 
body,  however  different  in  appearance  and  structure,  were  built 
up  of  variously  modified  cells  ;  and  much  emphasis  was  placed 
upon  the  cell-membrane,  cell-contents  and  nucleus,  with  the 
idea  that  their  modifications  would  account  for  divers  organs, 
and  their  manifold  functions. 

This  hope  was  doomed  to  disappointment,  for  within  ten 
years  of  the  researches  of  Schultze  which  had  seemingly  estab- 
lished the  theory,  that  same  histologist  threw  over  the  whole 
business  of  membranes  as  in  anywise  essential  and  retained 
only  the  enclosed  living  matter  with  its  nucleus.  He  saw  that 
the  work  done  by  the  '  cell '  was  not  so  much  the  result  of  its 
cellular  structure,  as  that  that  structure  itself  was  a  result  of  a 
formless  living  substance  within,  which  he  called  protoplasm. 
» The  use  of  this  word,  protoplasm,  now  so  common,  dates  from 
the  publications  of  the  researches  of  Schultze  between  1861-63. 
Von  Mohl  had  proposed  the  word  in  1846,  though  without  a 


PSYCHO-MECHANISMS. 

proper  conception  of  the  thing.  The  credit  of  the  discovery 
has  to  be  divided  among  several.  The  French  physicist 
Dujardin  is  no  doubt  entitled  to  the  credit  of  priority  in  dis- 
covery, but  the  name  he  proposed  — '  sarcode  '  —  did  not  adapt 
itself  to  the  fancy,  perhaps,  and  lacked  the  articulate  roll  of  the 
other,  and  it  has  fallen  into  disuse. 

The  inquiry  had  been  pushed  back  an  important  step  by  the 
recognition  that,  as  Huxley  puts  it,  the  cells  "  are  no  more  the 
producers  of  the  vital  phenomena  than  the  shells  scattered  in 
orderly  lines  along  the  seabeach  are  the  instruments  by  which 
the  gravitative  force  of  the  moon  acts  upon  the  ocean.  Like 
these,  the  cells  mark  only  where  the  vital  tides  have  been,  and 
how  they  have  acted."  Hence  arose,  what  may  be  called,  the 
protoplasmic  movement  — "a  movement  which,  throwing  over- 
board altogether  all  conceptions  of  life  as  the  outcome  of 
organism,  or  the  mechanical  result  of  structural  conditions, 
attempts  to  put  physiology  on  the  same  footing  as  physics  and 
chemistry,  and  regards  all  vital  phenomena  as  the  complex 
product  of  certain  fundamental  properties  exhibited  by  matter, 
which,  either  from  its  intrinsic  nature  or  from  its  existing  in 
peculiar  conditions,  is  known  as  living  matter,  —  "  mechanical 
contrivances  in  the  form  of  organs  serving  only  to  modify  in 
special  ways  the  results  of  the  exercise  of  these  fundamental 
activities,  and  in  no  sense  determining  their  initial  develop- 
ment." 

It  is  to  be  understood,  then,  that  from  the  lowest  possible 
forms  of  animal  life  in  the  protozoa,  as  well  as  in  the  lowest 
vegetable  structures  to  the  highest  development  in  man,  all 
tissues  —  all  organs,  nerves,  muscles,  cartilages  —  and  whatever 
distinctions  of  tissue  there  may  be,  are  built  up  out  of  the 
same  protoplasmic  unit. 

It  is  not  necessary  to  go  into  detail  as  to  how  structural 
forms  are  built  up  out  of  this  structureless  basis  of  life.  In  its 
simplest  form,  a  single  unit- mass  constitutes  a  living  being,  as 


2O  MECHANISM    AND    PERSONALITY. 

in  the  amoeba.  There  cannot  be  said  to  be  any  distinction  of 
parts  j  though  perhaps  this  is  not  absolutely  true  :  one  such 
being  seems  to  be  elementary,  presenting  only  one  cellular 
development,  but,  while  without  organs  or  differentiations,  it 
has  nevertheless  in  itself  many  potencies,  or  capacities.  All 
organs,  looking  backwards,  find  themselves  despecialized,  the 
unit-mass  performing  the  functions  of  each  as  occasion  requires. 
A  unit-mass  has  the  power  of  assimilation,  by  which  it  changes 
dead  food  into  its  living  self :  it  has  the  power  of  movement  or 
contractibility  by  which  it  adjusts  itself  to  the  performance  of 
its  functions  as  an  animal,  changing  its  form  constantly,  and  it 
has  sensitiveness  or  irritability  which  enables  it  to  respond  to 
external  stimuli. 

It  is  therefore  very  far  from  a  unicum  —  oneness  without 
marks  or  distinctions  of  form,  states  or  power.  It  is  simple 
indeed  compared  with  the  unending  variety  of  specialized 
forms  growing  out  of  it,  but  as  the  meeting  place,  or  common 
ground  of  all  these  it  must,  in  its  potentialities  at  least,  be 
infinitely  complex.  It  presents  again  the  problem  of  '  the  one 
and  the  many.' 

I  quote  Professor  Foster  in  Encyclopedia  Britannica  [Phys- 
iology] ,  upon  whom  we  may  confidently  rely :  "  The  internal 
changes  leading  to  these  movements  may  begin,  and  the  move- 
ments themselves  be  executed  by  any  part  of  the  uniform  body, 
and  they  may  take  place  without  any  obvious  cause.  So  far 
from  being  always  the  mere  passive  results  of  the  action  of 
extrinsic  forces,  they  may  occur  spontaneously,  that  is,  without 
the  coincidence  of  any  recognizable  disturbance  whatever  in 
the  external  conditions  to  which  the  body  is  exposed.  They 
appear  to  be  analogous  to  what  in  higher  animals  we  speak 
of  as  acts  of  volition.  They  may,  however,  be  provoked  by 
changes  in  external  conditions.  A  quiescent  amoeba  may  be 
excited  to  activity  by  the  touch  of  some  strange  body,  or  by 
some  other  want,  —  what,  in  the  ordinary  language  of  Physi- 


I 


PSYCHO-MECHANISMS.  21 

ology,  is  spoken  of  as  stimulus.  The  protoplasmic  mass  is  not 
only  mobile,  but  sensitive.  When  a  stimulus  is  applied  to  one 
part  of  the  surface  a  movement  may  commence  in  another  and 
quite  distant  part  of  the  body  j  that  is  to  say,  molecular  dis- 
turbances appear  to  be  propagated  along  its  substance  without 
visible  change.  The  uniform  protoplasmic  mass  of  the  amoeba 
exhibits  the  rudiments  of  those  attributes  or  powers  which  we 
described  as  being  the  fundamental  characteristics  of  the  mus- 
cular and  nervous  structures  of  the  higher  animals. 

"  These  facts,  and  other  considerations  which  might  be 
brought  forward,  lead  to  the  tentative  conception  of  protoplasm 
as  being  a  substance  (if  we  may  use  the  word  in  a  somewhat 
loose  sense)  not  only  unstable  in  nature  but  subject  to  incessant 
change,  existing  indeed  as  the  expression  of  incessant  molecular, 
that  is,  chemical  and  physical,  change,  very  much  as  a  fountain 
is  the  expression  of  an  incessant  replacement  of  water.  We 
may  picture  to  ourselves  this  total  change  which  we  denote  by 
the  term  '  metabolism  '  as  consisting  on  the  one  hand  of  a 
downward  series  of  changes  (katabolic  changes),  a  stair  of 
many  steps,  in  which  more  complex  bodies  are  broken  down 
with  the  setting  free  of  energy  info  simpler -and  simpler  waste 
bodies,  and  on  the  other  hand  of  an  upward  series  of  changes 
(anabolic  changes) ,  also  a  stair  of  many  steps,  by  which  the 
dead  food,  of  varying  simplicity  or  complexity,  is,  with  the 
further  assumption  of  energy,  built  up  into  more  and  more 
complex  bodies.  The  summit  of  this  double  stair  we  call 
'  protoplasm.'  Whether  we  have  the  right  to  speak  of  it  as  a 
single  body,  in  the  chemical  sense  of  the  word,  or  as  a  mixture 
in  some  way  of  several  bodies,  whether  we  should  regard  it  as 
the  very  summit  of  the  double  stair,  or  as  embracing  as  well 
the  topmost  steps  on  either  side,  we  cannot  at  present  tell,  — 
even  if  there  be  a  single  substance  forming  the  summit,  its 
existence  is  absolutely  temporary  :  at  one  instant  it  is  made, 
and  at  the  next  un-made.  Matter  which  is  passing  through  the 


22  MECHANISM    AND    PERSONALITY. 

phases  of  life  rolls  up  the  ascending  steps  to  the  top,  and  forth- 
with rolls  down  on  the  other  side.  .  .  .  Further,  the  dead  food, 
itself  fairly  but  far  from  wholly  stable  in  character,  becomes 
more  and  more  unstable  as  it  rises  into  the  more  complex  liv- 
ing material.  It  becomes  more  and  more  explosive,  and  when 
it  reaches  the  summit  its  equilibrium  is  overthrown  and  it  actu- 
ally explodes.  The  whole  downward  stair  of  events  seems  in 
fact  to  be  a  series  of  explosions,  by  means  of  which  the  energy 
latent  in  the  dead  food,  and  augmented  by  the  touches  through 
which  the  dead  food  becomes  living  protoplasm,  is  set  free. 
Some  of  this  food  energy  is  used  up  again  within  the  material 
itself,  in  order  to  carry  on  this  same  vivification  of  dead  food ; 
the  rest  leaves  the  body  as  heat  or  motion.  Sometimes  the 
explosions  are,  so  to  speak,  scattered,  going  off  as  it  were  irreg- 
ularly throughout  the  material,  like  a  quantity  of  gunpowder 
sprinkled  over  a  surface,  giving  rise  to  innumerable  minute 
puffs,  but  producing  no  massive  visible  effects.  Sometimes  they 
take  place  in  unison,  many  occurring  together,  or  in  such  rapid 
sequence  that  a  summation  of  their  effects  is  possible,  as  in 
gunpowder  rammed  into  a  charge,  and  we  are  then  able  to 
recognize  their  result  as  visible  movement,  or  as  appreciable 
rise  of  temperature." 

The  human  body  is  composed  of  substances  varying  in  molec- 
ular structure,  each  and  all  built  up  out  of,  or  by  means  of 
protoplasm,  and,  however  dissimilar  in  appearance  and  func- 
tion, called  tissues  of  the  body.  We  are  especially  concerned 
with  that  most  delicate  system  which  may  be  called  the  border- 
land of  the  spirit  world,  and  which  certainly  serves  as  the 
physical  basis  of  all  psychical  action.  This  is  called  the  ner- 
vous system,  and  without  doubt  it  dominates  the  whole  bodily 
organism.  In  immediate  connection  with  it,  and  in  necessary 
co-operation  with  it,  we  have  the  muscular  system. 

There  are  two  general  classes  of  nerves,  the  sensory  and  the 
motor  (also  called  afferent  and  efferent) .  They  are,  so  far  as 


•k 


9  PSYCHO-MECHANISMS.  23 

is  known,  of  the  same  composition,  being  highly  irritable  fibres 
or  strings,  the  sensory  nerves  normally  conducting  stimuli  from 
the  periphery  or  external  surfaces  to  nerve-centres  in  the  spinal 
cord,  or  the  brain,  and  the  motor  system  from  the  nerve-cen- 
tres to  the  various  muscles  and  other  organs  of  the  body.  A 
stimulus  being  applied  at  the  extremity  or  at  any  point  along 
the  course  of  a  sensory  nerve,  an  irritation  or  molecular  move- 
ment, called  a  wave  or  impulse,  is  sent  along  the  nerve  till  it 
reaches  a  nerve-centre,  whence  after  a  certain  delay  another 
impulse  issues,  out  from  the  nerve-centre  along  the  motor  nerve, 
until  it  reaches,  for  example,  the  proper  muscle,  whereupon 
the  muscle  contracts.  The  action  of  the  nerve  extremity  in 
response  to  an  external  stimulus,  and  the  propagation  of  the 
impulse  to  the  nerve-centre  is  due  to  the  protoplasmic  sensi- 
bility. The  reaction  is  commonly  looked  upon  as  purely  me- 
chanical or  non-mental  in  cases  where  the  lower  nerve-centres 
alone  are  concerned  and  is  then  called  a  reflex  action.  A 
large  part  of  the  bodily  "movement  is  accomplished  thus  without 
the  intervention  of  thought  or  consciousness. 

The  well-known  experiment  with  a  frog  is  perhaps  the  best 
illustration  of  reflex  action.  If  the  hind  foot  of  a  decapitated 
frog  is  pinched,  it  withdraws  the  foot  from  the  irritation,  the 
sensory  nerve  transmitting  the  impulse  to  the  nerve-centre  in 
the  spinal  cord,  and  the  motor  nerve  to  the  muscle,  thus  caus- 
ing the  reaction.  If  the  irritation  be  made  greater,  the  frog 
responds  more  strongly.  This  seems  strange  enough,  but  if 
the  back  of  the  frog  be  touched  with  an  acid,  it  rubs  it  off  with 
the  foot  on  the  same  side.  Cut  off  this  foot  and  apply  acid 
to  the  same  spot  —  the  frog  makes  an  evident  effort  to  use  the 
stump  of  the  amputated  limb  as  before,  but  not  succeeding, 
it  makes  use  after  some  delay  of  the  foot  on  the  other  side, 
and  succeeds  in  rubbing  it  off,  thus  presenting  the  appearance 
of  deliberative  intelligent  action. 

The  nerve-centres  through  which  personal  or  psychical  action 


24  MECHANISM    AND    PERSONALITY. 

is  accomplished  are  found  in  the  upper  or  cerebral  portion  of 
the  brain,  which  in  the  higher  vertebrate  animals  reaches  a 
marked  development,  attaining  in  man  an  enormous  propor- 
tional enlargement. 

There  are  two  cerebral  hemispheres,  connected  by  the  great 
commissure  or  callosum,  and  so  placed  as  to  have  their  flat 
faces  separated  by  a  vertical  partition,  which  passes  from 
front  to  rear  within  the  skull.  They  occupy  the  whole  of  the 
upper  portion  of  the  cranium  down  as  far  as  the  level  of  the 
eyebrows.  Each  hemisphere  is  composed  of  two  substances 
quite  different  in  appearance  and  structure,  —  the  gray  matter 
which  is  the  upper  and  outer  envelope,  and  the  white  matter 
which  is  the  interior  mass.  The  gray  matter  encroaches  on 
the  white  irregularly,  and  is  much  corrugated  and  convoluted, 
the  folds  at  many  points  extending  far  down  into  the  white 
matter  which  supports  it.  While  symmetrical  in  a  general  way, 
the  convolutions  and  areas  of  the  two  hemispheres  by  no  means 
correspond  exactly.  The  gray  matter  is  a  congeries  of  nerve- 
cells,  numbering,  according  to  some  estimates,  more  than  a 
thousand  millions  —  connected  with  each  other  and  with  the 
lower  brain  by  a  still  larger  number  of  nerve-fibres.  The  white 
matter  which  underlies  the  gray  is  composed  essentially  of  these 
fibres;  some  of  them  connecting  the  cerebrum  or  fore-brain 
with  the  lower  portions  of  the  organ,  some  connecting  the 
two  hemispheres  together,  while  others  connect  the  different 
divisions  of  the  same  hemisphere.  The  gray  matter  is  not 
found  exclusively  in  the  cortex  of  the  hemispheres,  but  at  all 
the  levels  between  the  latter  and  the  termination  of  the  spinal 
cord.  Between,  and  occupying  a  central  position  with  respect 
to  the  hemispheres,  lie  two  paired  masses  of  gray  matter,  called 
the  optic  thalami  and  the  corpora  striata,  in  which  a  large  part 
of  the  nerve-fibres  lose  themselves,  much  as  the  wires  of  a 
telephone  system  converge  at  the  central  office.  This  system 
of  the  cerebral  hemispheres  is  connected  with  the  cerebellum, 


PSYCHO-MECHANISMS.  25 


or  hind-brain,  and  this  with  the  medulla  oblongata,  which  is  an 
enlargement  of  the  spinal  cord,  and  so  on  down  to  the  spinal 
cord  itself.  It  is  generally  agreed  that  the  reflex  or  automatic 
movements  of  the  body  are  chiefly  governed  by  this  lower  sys- 
tem, including  the  spinal  cord  itself.  This  cord  is  extremely 
complex,  consisting  of  white  and  gray  matter,  but  unlike  the 
encephalic  organs,  the  bulk  of  the  white  is  exterior,  entirely 
enclosing  the  gray  matter  within. 

But  there  is  no  need  —  indeed  it  is  out  of  the  question  to  go 
into  the  details  of  physiology.  The  nervous  system  is  too 
wonderfully  complicated  to  be  understood  at  a  glance,  and  the 
foregoing  sketch  as  well  as  what  follows,  must  be  taken  as  true, 
only  as  a  mere  outline.  The  simplicity  of  statement  as  to  the 
sensory  and  motor  nerves  and  the  whole  organism  of  the  brain 
needs  many  qualifying  statements  in  details,  but  they  would  in 
nowise  affect  our  present  purpose. 

It  is  generally  conceded  that  the  mechanism  which  serves 
as  the  physical  basis  of  conscious  sensation  is  in  the  gray 
matter  of  the  cerebral  hemispheres,  though  the  fact  as  to 
whether  this  is  exclusively  the  case,  is  open  to  question.  No 
one  doubts  that  consciousness  has  a  physical  basis,  and  it  is  a 
matter  of  no  great  moment  to  the  psychologist  where,  or  what 
it  is.  It  is  not  to  be  disputed  that  the  cells  of  the  gray  matter 
of  the  cortex  of  the  cerebrum  are  chiefly  concerned  in  all  well- 
defined  psychical  action,  but  it  is  difficult,  perhaps  impossible 
to  find  its  limits.  It  seems  rather,  as  has  been  held,  that  every 
nervous  action  affects  in  greater  or  less  degree  the  entire 
system,  and  that  there  can  be  no  line  of  separation  drawn  from 
finger  tip  to  the  superior  frontal  convolution. 

The  proofs  that  the  nerve-cells  in  the  gray  matter  of  the 
cerebral  hemispheres  have  chiefly  to  do  with  intelligent  action 
are  sufficiently  clear.  In  the  first  place,  it  is  found  that,  in  the 
animal  kingdom,  the  gradual  development  of  the  mass  of  this 
matter  is  fairly  parallel  with  the  corresponding  rise  in  the  scale 


26  MECHANISM    AND    PERSONALITY. 

of  intelligence.  The  gray  matter  is  found  where  the  lowest 
well-marked  volitional  power  discovers  itself,  and  gains  in 
volume  and  specialization  as  the  power  of  conscious  action 
in  the  ascending  scale  of  animal  life  increases,  reaching  its 
culmination  in  man. 

But  the  results  of  vivisection,  carefully  and  cautiously  prac- 
tised upon  the  lower  animals,  and  of  the  observations  and 
experiments  which  opportunity  has  made  possible  in  the  human 
brain,  all  tend  to  establish  the  fact.  As  successive  slices  of 
the  brain-matter  are  carefully  removed  from  before  back- 
wards, an  animal  becomes  more  and  more  stupid,  until  at  last 
all  indications  of  perception  and  volition  are  gone.  A  pigeon 
so  mutilated  may  live  for  months,  but  in  a  profound  stupor 
without  the  slightest  heed  to  what  goes  on  about  it.  The 
animal  still  responds  in  a  mechanical  way  to  stimuli,  and  per- 
forms all  the  usual  reflex  adjustments  in  a  sleepy  fashion, — 
such  as  the  use  of  the  wings,  when  thrown  into  the  air ;  sitting 
on  its  perch,  and  all  its  ordinary  bodily  movements ;  but  it 
rarely  moves  unless  stimulated  from  without. 

Experiments  have  been  made  upon  reptiles  and  mammals 
with  like  results. 

The  effects  are  quite  different  upon  the  removal  of  the  cere- 
bellum, or  lower  part  of  the  brain.  With  a  pigeon,  says  Pro- 
fessor McKendrick  of  Glasgow  —  "  If  the  cerebellum  be  removed 
gradually  by  successive  slices,  there  is  a  progressive  effect  upon 
locomotive  action.  On  taking  away  the  upper  layer  there  is 
some  weakness,  and  hesitation  in  gait.  When  the  sections  have 
reached  the  middle  of  the  organ,  the  animal  staggers  much, 
and  assists  itself  by  its  wings  in  walking.  The  sections  being 
continued  further,  it  is  no  longer  able  to  preserve  its  equilib- 
rium without  the  assistance  of  its  wings  and  tail ;  its  attempts 
to  fly  or  walk  resemble  the  fruitless  efforts  of  a  nestling,  and 
the  slightest  touch  knocks  it  over.  At  last,  when  the  whole 
cerebellum  is  removed,  it  cannot  support  itself  even  with  the 


PSYCHO-MECHANISMS.  27 

aid  of  its  wings  and  tail ;  it  makes  violent  efforts  to  rise,  but 
only  rolls  up  and  down ;  and  then,  fatigued  with  struggling,  it 
remains  for  a  few  seconds  at  rest  on  its  back  or  abdomen,  and 
then  again  commences  its  vain  struggles  to  rise  and  walk.  Yet 
all  the  while  sight  and  hearing  are  perfect.  It  attempts  to 
escape,  and  appears  to  have  all  its  sensations  perfect.  The 
results  contrast  very  strongly  with  those  of  removing  the  cere- 
bral lobes.  .  .  .  There  is  thus  a  loss  of  the  power  of  co-ordi- 
nation, or  of  regulation  of  movement,  without  the  IQSS  of  sen- 
sibility, and  hence  it  has  been  assumed  that  in  some  way  or 
other  the  cerebellum  acts  as  the  co-ordinator  of  movements." 

While  the  foregoing  is  undoubtedly  true  in  the  main,  it  must 
be  accepted  with  some  degree  of  caution.  There  is  not  a 
little  conflicting  evidence  on  the  subject.  Professor  Ladd  has 
brought  the  evidence  together  very  fully  in  his  work  on  Physi- 
ological Psychology.  The  specific  functions  of  the  cerebellum 
cannot  be  said  to  be  yet  fully  determined.  No  disturbance  of 
the  sense  of  sight,  hearing,  or  the  muscular  sense  are  certainly 
known  to  follow  injuries  to  this  organ  when  other  parts  of  the 
brain  remain  uninjured,  and  cases  are  reported  in  which  these 
senses  were  unimpaired  in  the  total  absence  of  the  cerebellum. 
The  case  of  a  girl,  Alexandrine  Labrosse,  is  reported  who  was 
found  at  the  autopsy  to  have  had  no  cerebellum.  In  its  place 
was  a  mere  gelatinous  membrane  attached  to  the  medulla  by 
two  peduncles  of  the  same  nature ;  yet  she  had  no  difficulty  in 
co-ordinating  her  movements,  and  was  in  full  possession  of  her 
senses.  She  fell  easily,  however,  and  had  some  difficulties  of 
speech.  Another  case  is  reported  of  a  man  "whose  entire 
cerebellum  was  changed  into  a  brown  purulent  mass."  He 
could  walk,  but  in  a  tottering  way.  Another  case,  a  woman 
dying  at  the  age  of  sixty-nine,  was  found  to  have  suffered  an 
entire  atrophy  of  all  the  gray  substance  of  the  cerebellum ;  yet 
she  did  not  lose  her  muscular  vigor,  and  could  co-ordinate  all 
her  muscles,  though  her  Iocomiuj0tf"fya3  disturbed  and  difficult. 


28  MECHANISM    AND    PERSONALITY. 


CHAPTER   IV. 

PSYCHO-MECHANISMS  (continued} . 

Professor  Romanes  quoted.  Experiments  of  vivisection.  Brain-localiza- 
tions. Electrical  stimulations.  Rate  of  nerve-transmission.  Time  required 
for  action  of  nerve-centres.  Rate  of  nerve-vibrations.  The  sympathetic 
system.  Functions.  Independent  of  volition.  Inhibition.  Brain-develop- 
ment. Brain-mass.  Different  nationalities. 

T     ET  us  return  to  the  cerebral  hemispheres.    I  make  free  use 

J >   of  the  admirable  summary  given  by  Professor  Romanes  in 

his  paper  already  referred  to.  If  the  gray  matter  of  one  hem- 
isphere be  removed,  intelligent  action  is  taken  away  from  the 
corresponding  (i.e.  the  opposite)  side  of  the  body,  while  it 
remains  intact  on  the  other  side.  For  example,  if  a  dog  be 
deprived  of  one  hemisphere,  the  eye  which  was  supplied  from 
it  with  nerve-fibres  continues  able  to  see,  or  to  transmit  im- 
pressions to  the  lower  nerve-centre  called  the  optic  ganglion ; 
for  this  eye  will  then  mechanically  follow  the  hand  waved  in 
front  of  it.  But  if  the  hand  should  hold  a  piece  of  meat,  the 
dog  will  show  no  mental  recognition  of  the  meat,  which  of 
course  it  will  immediately  seize  if  exposed  to  the  view  of  the 
other  eye.  The  same  thing  is  found  to  happen  in  the  case  of 
birds  :  on  the  injured  side  sensation,  or  the  power  of  respond- 
ing to  a  stimulus,  remains  intact ;  while  perception,  or  the  power 
of  mental  recognition,  is  destroyed. 

This  description  applies  to  the  gray  matter  of  the  cerebral 
hemispheres  as  a  whole.  But  of  course  the  question  next  arises 
whether  it  only  acts  as  a  whole,  or  whether  there  is  any  local- 
ization of  different  intellectual  faculties  in  different  parts  of  it. 


PSYCHO-MECHANISMS.  2Q 

Now  in  answer  to  this  question,  it  has  long  been  known  that 
the  faculty  of  speech  is  definitely  localized  in  a  part  of  the  gray 
matter  lying  just  behind  the  forehead ;  for  when  the  part  is 
injured,  a  man  loses  all  power  of  expressing  even  the  most 
simple  ideas  in  spoken  words,  while  the  ideas  themselves  remain 
as  clear  as  ever.  It  is  remarkable  that  in  each  individual,  only 
this  part  of  one  hemisphere  appears  to  be  used ;  and  there  is 
some  evidence  to  show  that  left-handed  persons  use  the  oppo- 
site side  from  right-handed.  Moreover,  when  the  lesion  occurs 
in  the  left  hemisphere,  either  congenitally  or  during  the  first 
years  of  life,  the  right  side  apparently  takes  up  the  function. 

Within  the  last  few  years  the  important  discovery  has  been 
made,  that  by  stimulating  with  electricity  the  surface  of  the 
gray  matter  of  the  hemispheres,  muscular  movements  are 
evoked,  and  that  certain  patches  of  the  gray  matter,  when  thus 
stimulated,  always  throw  into  action  the  same  groups  of  mus- 
cles. In  other  words,  there  are  definite  local  areas  of  gray 
matter,  which,  when  stimulated,  throw  into  action  definite 
groups  of  muscles.  The  available  surface  of  the  cerebral 
hemispheres  has  now  been  in  large  measure  explored  and 
mapped  out  with  reference  to  these  so-called  motor-centres ; 
and  thus  our  knowledge  of  the  neuro-muscular  machinery  of 
the  higher  animals  (including  man)  has  been  very  greatly 
furthered. 

Here  I  [Professor  Romanes]  observe  parenthetically  that, 
as  the  brain  is  insentient  to  injuries  inflicted  upon  its  own  sub- 
stance, none  of  the  experiments  to  which  I  have  alluded  entail 
any  suffering  to  the  animals  experimented  upon ;  and  it  is 
evident  that  the  important  information  which  has  thus  been 
gained  could  not  have  been  gained  by  any  other  method.  I 
may  also  observe  that  as  these  motor-centres  occur  in  the  gray 
matter  of  the  hemispheres,  a  strong  probability  arises  that  they 
are  not  only  the  motor-centres,  but  also  the  volitional  centres 
which  originate  the  intellectual  commands  for  the  contraction 


3O  MECHANISM    AND    PERSONALITY. 

of  this  and  that  group  of  muscles.  Unfortunately  we  cannot 
interrogate  an  animal  whether,  when  we  stimulate  a  motor- 
centre,  we  arouse  in  the  animal's  mind  an  act  of  will  to  throw 
the  corresponding  group  of  muscles  into  action ;  but  that  those 
motor-centres  are  really  centres  of  volition  is  pointed  to  by  the 
fact  that  electrical  stimuli  have  no  longer  any  effect  upon  them 
when  the  mental  faculties  are  suspended  by  anaesthetics,  nor  in 
the  case  of  young  animals  when  the  mental  faculties  have  not 
been  sufficiently  developed  to  admit  of  voluntary  co-ordination 
among  the  muscles  which  are  concerned.  On  the  whole,  then, 
it  is  not  improbable  that  on  stimulating  artificially  these  motor- 
centres  of  the  brain,  a  physiologist  is  actually  playing  from 
without,  and  at  his  own  pleasure,  upon  the  volition  of  the  ani- 
mals. The  rate  at  which  molecular  movements  travel  through 
a  nerve  has  been  measured,  and  found  to  be  about  100  feet 
per  second,  or  somewhat  more  than  a  mile  a  minute,  in  the 
nerves  of  a  frog.  In  the  nerves  of  a  mammal  it  is  about  twice 
as  fast ;  so  that  if  London  were  connected  with  New  York  by 
means  of  a  mammalian  nerve,  instead  of  an  electric  cable,  it 
would  require  nearly  a  whole  day  for  the  message  to  pass. 

Next,  the  time  has  also  been  measured  which  is  required  by 
a  nerve-centre  to  perform  its  part  in  a  reflex  action,  when  no 
thought  or  consciousness  is  involved.  This  time,  in  the  case 
of  the  winking  reflex,  and  apart  from  the  time  required  for  the 
passage  of  the  molecular  wave  up  and  down  the  sensory  and 
motor  nerves,  is  about  -^V  of  a  second.  Such  is  the  rate  at 
which  a  nerve-centre  conducts  its  operations  when  no  con- 
sciousness or  volition  is  involved.  But  when  consciousness 
and  volition  are  involved,  or  when  the  cerebral  hemispheres 
are  called  into  play,  the  time  required  is  considerably  greater. 
For  the  operations  on  the  part  of  the  hemispheres  which  are 
comprised  in  perceiving  a  simple  sensation  (such  as  an  elec- 
trical shock)  and  the  volitional  act  in  signalling  the  perception, 
cannot  be  performed  in  less  than  about  y1^  of  a  second,  which 


PSYCHO-MECHANISMS.  31 

is  nearly  twice  as  long  as  the  time  required  by  the  lower  nerve- 
centres  for  the  performance  of  a  reflex  action.  Other  experi- 
ments prove  that  the  more  complex  an  act  of  perception,  the 
more  time  is  required  for  its  performance.  Thus  when  the 
experiment  is  made  to  consist  not  merely  in  signalling  a  per- 
ception, but  in  signalling  one  of  two  or  more  perceptions  (such 
as  an  electric  shock  on  one  or  other  of  the  two  hands ;  which 
of  five  letters  is  suddenly  exposed  to  view,  etc.),  a  longer  time  is 
required  for  the  more  complex  process  in  determining  which 
of  the  two  or  more  expected  stimuli  is  perceived,  and  which 
of  the  appropriate  signals  to  make  in  response.  The  time  con- 
sumed by  the  cerebral  hemispheres  in  meeting  a  "  dilemma  " 
of  this  kind  is  from  ^  to  -^  of  a  second  longer  than  that  which 
they  consume  in  the  case  of  a  simpler  perception.  Therefore, 
whenever  mental  operations  are  concerned,  a  relatively  much 
greater  time  is  required  for  a  nerve-centre  to  perform  its 
adjustments  than  when  a  merely  mechanical  or  non-mental 
response  is  needed ;  and  the  more  complex  the  mental  opera- 
tion, the  more  time  is  necessary.  Such  may  be  termed  the 
physiology  of  deliberation. 

So  much,  then,  for  the  rate  at  which  molecular  movements 
travel  through  the  nerves,  and  the  times  which  the  nerve- 
centres  consume  in  performing  their  molecular  adjustments. 
We  may  next  consider  the  researches  which  have  been  very 
recently  made  upon  the  rates  of  these  movements  themselves, 
or  the  number  of  vibrations  per  second  with  which  the  particles 
of  nervous  matter  oscillate. 

If  by  means  of  a  suitable  apparatus,  a  muscle  is  made  to 
record  its  own  contractions,  we  find  that  during  all  the  time  it 
is  in  contraction,  it  is  undergoing  a  vibratory  movement  at  the 
rate  of  about  nine  pulsations  per  second.  What  is  the  mean- 
ing of  this  movement  ?  The  meaning  is  that  the  act  of  will  in 
the  brain,  which  serves  as  a  stimulus  to  the  contraction  of  the 
muscle,  is  accompanied  by  a  vibratory  movement  in  the  gray 


32  MECHANISM    AND    PERSONALITY. 

matter  of  the  brain ;  that  this  movement  is  going  on  at  the 
rate  of  nine  pulsations  per  second ;  and  that  the  muscle  is  giv- 
ing a  separate  or  distinct  contraction  in  response  to  every  one 
of  these  nervous  pulsations.  That  such  is  the  true  explanation 
of  the  rhythm  in  the  muscle  is  proved  by  the  fact,  that  if  in- 
stead of  contracting  a  muscle  by  an  act  of  the  will,  it  be 
contracted  by  means  of  a  rapid  series  of  electrical  shocks 
playing  upon  its  attached  nerve,  the  record  then  furnished 
shows  a  similar  trembling  going  on  in  the  muscle  as  in  the  pre- 
vious case ;  but  the  tremors  of  contraction  are  now  no  longer 
at  the  rate  of  nine  per  second  :  they  correspond  beat  for  beat 
with  the  interruption  of  the  electrical  current.  That  is  to  say, 
the  muscle  is  responding  separately  to  every  separate  stimulus 
which  it  receives  through  the  nerve ;  and  further  experiment 
shows  that  it  is  able  thus  to  keep  time  with  the  separate  shocks, 
even  though  these  be  made  to  follow  one  another  so  rapidly  as 
1000  per  second.  Therefore  we  can  have  no  doubt  that  the 
slow  rhythm  of  nine  per  second  under  the  influence  of  voli- 
tional stimulation,  represents  the  rate  at  which  the  muscle  is 
receiving  so  many  separate  impulses  from  the  brain  :  the  mus- 
cle is  keeping  time  with  the  molecular  vibrations  going  on  in 
the  cerebral  hemispheres  at  the  rate  of  nine  beats  per  second. 
Careful  tracings  show  that  this  rate  cannot  be  increased  by 
increasing  the  strength  of  the  volitional  stimulus ;  but  some 
individuals  —  and  those  usually  who  are  of  quickest  intelli- 
gence —  display  a  somewhat  quicker  rate  of '  rhythm,  which 
may  be  as  high  as  eleven  per  second.  Moreover,  it  is  found 
that  by  stimulating  by  strychnine  any  of  the  centres  of  reflex 
action,  pretty  nearly  the  same  rate  of  rhythm  is  exhibited  by 
the  muscles  thus  thrown  into  contraction ;  so  that  all  the  nerve- 
cells  in  the  body  are  thus  shown  to  have  in  their  vibrations 
pretty  nearly  the  same  period,  and  not  to  be  able  to  vibrate 
with  any  other.  For  no  matter  how  rapidly  the  electric  shocks 
are  allowed  to  play  upon  the  gray  matter  of  the  cerebral  hem- 


PSYCHO-MECHANISMS.  33 

ispheres,  as  distinguished  from  the  nerve-trunks  proceeding 
from  them  to  the  muscles,  the  muscles  always-  show  the  same 
rhythm  of  about  nine  beats  per  second  :  the  nerve-cells,  unlike 
the  nerve-fibres,  refuse  to  keep  time  with  the  electric  shocks, 
and  will  only  respond  to  them  by  vibrating  at  their  own  intrinsic 
rate  of  nine  beats  per  second. 

Thus  much,  then,  for  the  rate  of  molecular  vibration  which 
goes  on  in  the  nerve-centres.  But  the  rate  of  such  vibration 
which  goes  on  in  sensory  and  motor  nerves  may  be  very  much 
more  rapid.  For  while  a  nerve-centre  is  only  able  to  originate 
a  vibration  at  the  rate  of  about  nine  beats  per  second,  a  motor 
nerve,  as  we  have  already  seen,  is  able  to  transmit  a  vibration 
of  at  least  1000  beats  per  second;  and  a  sensory  nerve  which 
at  the  surface  of  its  expansion  is  able  to  respond  differently  to 
differences  of  musical  pitch,  of  temperature,  and  even  of  color, 
is  probably  able  to  vibrate  very  much  more  rapidly  even  than 
this.  We  are  not,  indeed,  entitled  to  conclude  that  the  nerves 
of  special  sense  vibrate  in  actual  unison,  or  synchronize,  with 
these  external  sources  of  stimulation ;  but  we  are,  it  is  thought, 
bound  to  conclude  that  they  must  vibrate  in  some  numerical 
proportion  to  them  (else  we  should  not  perceive  objective  dif- 
ferences in  sound,  temperature,  or  color)  ;  and  even  this  im- 
plies that  they  are  probably  able  to  vibrate  at  some  enormous 
rate.  So  far  Professor  Romanes. 

The  central  nervous  system  is  intimately  connected  with 
another  set  of  ganglionic  centres,  and  nerve-fibres  distributed 
over  the  different  parts  of  the  body,  but  mutually  connected 
with  each  other,  called  the  sympathetic  system.  The  principal 
centres  of  this  system  lie  in  the  abdominal  cavity  near  the 
spine,  from  which  a  series  of  trunks  and  branches  known  as 
the  "  solar  plexus  "  radiate  to  the  muscular  walls  of  the  intesti- 
nal canal,  and  to  the  various  glandular  organs  connected  with 
it.  There  are  two  other  smaller  plexuses,  one  in  connection 
with  the  heart  and  great  blood-vessels,  and  the  other  with  the 


34  MECHANISM    AND    PERSONALITY. 

organs  of  reproduction  and  other  viscera  contained  in  the  cavity 
of  the  pelvis,  with  smaller  ramifications  throughout  the  body. 
The  action  of  this  system  is  almost  wholly  automatic.  It  can- 
not be  controlled  by  the  will  directly  at  all,  but  is  easily  affected 
indirectly  by  the  emotions,  particularly  in  relation  to  the  heart" 
and  arteries.  Everybody  knows  how  easily  the  heart's  move- 
ment is  affected  by  the  excitement  of  pleasure  or  apprehension, 
and  how  the  blood  mounts  to  the  face  in  blushes  or  leaves  it  in 
pallor.  All  mental  states  react  upon  the  sympathetic  nerves, 
no  doubt,  so  that  digestion  and  health  generally  depend  largely 
upon  the  cerebro- spinal  system  in  its  action  upon  the  sympa- 
thetic. The  functions  of  this  system  as  a  rule  are  performed 
silently  and  unperceived  by  consciousness.  "  The  wheels  of 
the  inner  life  of  the  human  machine  move  without  noise,"  and 
only  those  who  have  studied  the  subject,  or  have  been  told, 
know  anything  of  the  far  greater  part  of  the  functional  action 
of  the  organs  of  the  body. 

In  reflex  action  there  is  a  distinction  to  be  noted  of  great 
importance,  as  we  shall  see  when  we  come  to  consider  some  of 
the  phases  of  psychical  phenomena.  One  class  of  such  auto- 
matic action  is  wholly  beyond  the  control  of  the  will,  and 
another  set  is  directly  under  the  dominion  of  volition.  To  the 
first  class  belong,  as  already  said,  all  the  activities  of  the  sym- 
pathetic system,  together  with  innumerable  other  mechanical 
functions  which  are  absolutely  necessary  to  life,  and  so  are 
removed  from  all  meddling  on  the  part  of  the  personality.  To 
the  second  class  belong  many  actions  which,  though  in  the 
main  purely  automatic,  are  yet  susceptible  of  control.  For 
example  :  if  the  bottom  of  one's  foot  be  tickled,  the  reflex 
mechanism  withdraws  the  foot  from  the  irritation,  but  the  will 
can  set  aside  the  automatic  effort,  and  refuse  to  let  the  move- 
ment take  place.  This  is  an  inhibition,  and  those  elements  of 
the  personality  whose  functions  are  to  overrule  positive  activi- 
ties are  called  "  inhibitory."  These  inhibitions  probably  de- 


PSYCHO-MECHANISMS.  35 

pend  upon  mechanisms  in  the  brain,  since  it  is  known  that  the 
removal  of  the  brain  is  followed  by  greatly  increased  activity  in 
the  reflex  centres  of  the  spinal  cord.  Indeed,  pure  reflex  action 
for  the  most  part  occurs  only  after  the  removal  of  the  brain 
or  in  profound  sleep.  Any  reflex  movement  which  had  its 
origin  in  the  will  can  be  inhibited,  but  those  which  cannot  be 
incited  by  volition  cannot  be  consciously  overruled.  There  has 
been  an  effort  made  in  these  last  years  to  discover  a  separate 
nerve-apparatus  which  is  concerned  in  inhibitory  action,  but  the 
existence  of  such  a  separate  apparatus  is  not  considered  as 
established. 

An  interesting  and  important  question  arises  as  to  the  bear- 
ing of  brain-development  upon  intellectual  and  moral  power. 
It  has  been  much  discussed,  and  is  still  open  to  constant 
inquiry.  There  can  be  no  doubt  that  the  brain  is  the  great 
unital  mechanism  of  the  human  organism,  and  that  its  mass 
and  specialization  are  fairly  in  the  ratio  of  psychical  power  in 
the  ascending  scale  of  animal  life.  Its  development  has  been 
traced  in  the  utmost  detail  from  the  lowest  orders  in  which  the 
cerebral  vesicles  are  discoverable  up  to  the  fully  specialized  and 
marvellously  complex  brain  of  man.  Every  step  of  the  way  — 
every  division  of  what  was  single  —  every  folding  and  tucking 
in,  every  differentiation,  has  been  made  an  object  of  study,  and 
it  is  not  to  be  doubted  that  the  structural  brain- evolution  is 
fairly  parallel  with  the  increase  in  psychical  power  of  the  beings 
whose  nervous  organisms  are  dominated  by  the  encephalic 
organ.  It  would  have  been  more  amazing  had  it  not  proved 
to  be  so.  As  the  central  organ  of  a  pure  mechanism,  it  would 
have  been  out  of  all  analogy  and  all  meaning  had  not  the 
mechanism  of  this  organ  increased  in  its  specializations  as  the 
necessity  of  increased  functional  activity  became  necessary. 
As  it  is,  we  recognize  in  man  the  most  marvellous  mechanism 
to  be  found  in  the  whole  realm  of  nature,  and  in  the  brain  the 
most  marvellous  contrivance  of  the  Great  Mechanician. 


s 


36  MECHANISM    AND    PERSONALITY. 

The  weight  of  the  brain-mass  has  no  doubt  something  to  do 
with  the  character  of  psychical  powers,  but  this  can  only  be 
affirmed  in  general  terms,  it  is  well  known  that  many  idiots 
and  persons  of  low  intellectual  powers  have  had  brain  equal 
in  weight  to  men  of  highest  genius.  A  better  mark,  perhaps, 
of  high  intelligence  is  to  be  found  in  the  number  and  delicacy 
of  the  convolutions  of  the  cerebral  hemispheres  ;  but  even  this 
is  still  in  the  region  of  conjecture.  It  is  probable,  however, 
that  the  gray  matter  of  the  cerebral  hemispheres  is  the  centre 
of  the  mechanical  element  of  thought,  and  yet  connection  of 
thought  with  the  brain,  or  with  the  body  in  any  form  rests  on 
faint  sensations  of  effort,  weariness  and  the  like.  That  there 
is  an  immense  amount  of  work  done  by  the  intercranial  organs 
is  witnessed  to  by  the  fact  of  the  proportionally  large  amount 
of  arterial  blood  necessary  to  enable  them  to  fulfil  their  func- 
tions. The  entire  encephalic  organ  weighs  only  about  -^  of 
the  body,  and  yet  the  amount  of  blood  which  it  can  hold  is 
said  to  be  about  ^  of  the  whole. 

Comparative  anatomy  has  been  busy  with  the  problem  as  to 
the  relative  amount  of  brain-mass  in  different  nationalities,  but 
so  far  the  results  have  not  proved  conclusive,  though  the 
opinion  is  generally  held  that  the  average  weight  in  the  civil- 
ized races  is  somewhat  greater  than  that  in  the  savage  races. 
The  average  weight  of  the  brain  of  an  adult  male  European  is 
about  49  ounces,  while  it  is  said  that  the  average  of  the  sav- 
ages in  Oceanica  and  Africa  falls  somewhat  below.  The  brain 
of  women  is  about  ten  per  cent  less  in  weight  than  that  of 
men.  A  portion  of  this  is  doubtless  due  to  the  differences 
in  the  height  and  weight  of  the  body,  and  he  would  be  a 
bold  man  who,  in  these  days,  would  dare  to  hint  that  the  mar- 
gin left  is  not  quite  made  up  by  other  unreckoned  factors. 
A  large  amount  of  the  brain-substance  may  be  lost  without 
affecting,  so  far  as  can  be  observed,  the  intellectual  character 
of  the  patient. 


PSYCHO-MECHANISMS.  37 

The  brain  attains  nearly  its  full  size  quite  early  in  life  —  by  the 
age  of  eight  according  to  accepted  authorities,  but  it  is  thought 
by  later  investigators  that  this  period  is  too  short,  and  should 
be  extended  to  the  age  of  fifteen.  It  continues,  however,  to 
increase  in  weight  till  30  or  35  years,  or  possibly  even  longer. 
After  60  it  begins  to  diminish  in  weight.  The  weights  of  the 
brains  of  a  number  of  distinguished  men  are  on  record :  the 
brain  of  Cuvier  weighed  65.4  oz. ;  Dr.  Abercrombie's,  63  oz. ; 
Spurzheim's,  55  oz. ;  Louis  Agassiz's,  52.7  oz. ;  Dr.  Chalmers', 
53  oz. ;  Webster's,  53.5  oz. ;  Thackeray's,  58.5  oz. ;  Byron's, 
63  oz.  These  are  all  much  above  the  average ;  but  many  men 
of  great  mental  powers  have  had  brains  not  at  all  remarkable 
for  weight  or  size  ;  while  the  brain  weights  of  many  idiots  have 
run  fairly  up  to  the  maximum. 


38  MECHANISM    AND    PERSONALITY. 


CHAPTER  V. 

THE    SENSES TOUCH,  TASTE,   AND  SMELL. 

The  specific  senses.  Number  indefinite.  Touch  fundamental.  Pres- 
sure. End-organs.  Threshold  value.  Weber's  and  Fechner's  law.  '  Lo- 
cal signs.'  Pressure  spots.  Temperature  spots.  End-organs  of  taste. 
Stimuli.  Classification.  Sense  of  smell.  End-organs  of  smell.  Stimuli. 
Classification.  Muscular  sense.  End-organs  of  motion. 

LET  us  proceed  now  to  look  into  the  marvellous  mechanism 
by  which  the  personality  is  brought  in  contact  with  the 
external  world.  First,  we  have  what  are  called  the  '  special 
senses  '  —  that  is,  the  old-time  five  senses,  touch,  taste,  smell, 
hearing  and  sight ;  but  there  are  vigorous  claims  on  the  part 
of  physiology  for  the  recognition  of  a  number  of  other  senses 
as  specific  factors  in  sense-perception ;  —  notably  what  is  called 
the  '  muscular  sense  '  —  the  '  temperature  sense  '  —  the  '  general 
sense  '  (sensus-communis)  —  the  sense  of  '  pain  and  pleasure,' 
and  the  sense  of  'innervation  and  weariness.'  Whether  all 
these,  or  any  of  them,  are  entitled  to  rank  as  distinct  senses 
with  separate  organs,  is  yet  in  question.  Those  investigators 
who  hold  the  negative  contend  that  they  are  but  combinations 
of  simple  elements  or  states  of  consciousness.  Leaving  this 
question  aside  let  us  take  up  the  recognized  special  senses  sep- 
arately, and  we  shall  find  as  we  go  where  the  disputed  points 
lie,  and  what  is  claimed. 

Since  the  days  of  Democritus,  Touch  has  been  held  to  be  in 
some  sort  the  fundamental  sense.  In  the  light  of  modern  re- 
search this  is  but  confirmed  and  explained.  All  the  senses,  as 
we  have  seen,  are  immediately  dependent  upon  motion  for  their 


THE    SENSES TOUCH,    TASTE,    AND    SMELL.  39 

mechanical  action ;  and  since  the  bodily  organs  must  have  mo- 
tion communicated  to  them  by  stimuli  of  one  sort  or  another, 
contact  is  a  fundamental  necessity  in  the  establishment  of  reac- 
tions in  the  body.  But  this  general  sense  of  mere  contact  is 
far  too  wide  in  its  scope  to  be  called  touch  proper.  In  point 
of  fact,  there  is  no  consciousness  of  contact  in  any  of  the  senses, 
except  in  the  specific  sense  which  has  this  for  its  characteristic  ; 
that  is  to  say,  specific  Touch  is  that  sense  which  has  for  its 
note  or  mark  the  consciousness  of  actual  contact  from  pressure 
or  impact. 

What  is  the  physiological  solution  of  this  sense  of  pressure  ? 
Is  simple  contact  of  any  sort,  and  with  any  part  of  the  body 
all  that  is  necessary  to  rouse  this  sense  of  touch  ?  By  no  means. 
Some  parts  of  the  body,  notably  the  brain,  are  wholly  insen- 
tient. Even  contact  with  a  sensory  nerve  along  the  different 
points  of  its  course,  usually  gives  rise  to  pain  which  quite  ob- 
literates any  specific  sense  of  touch.  Pressure  sensations  are 
normally  due  to  the  excitation  of  the  end-organs  of  the  sensory 
nerves,  which  are  found  in  the  skin,  but  distributed  by  no 
means  uniformly  in  it. 

Histological  research  is  still  busy  with  the  general  problem 
of  the  nature  and  functions  of  these  end-organs.  Two  classes 
of  them  are,  however,  clearly  recognized  in  which  the  sensory 
nerves  terminate  in  the  skin,  one  called  '  end-fibres,'  and  the 
other  '  end-bulbs.'  We  cannot  enter  upon  the  refinements  and 
disputes  of  the  many  investigators.  It  is  enough  for  our  pur- 
pose to  know  that  the  '  end-bulbs  '  or  '  corpuscles  '  of  Pacini  — 
the  first  discovered  —  are  minute  plum-shaped  enlargements  at 
the  ends  of  medullated  nerves.  They  are  especially  in  the 
palms  of  the  hands  and  fingers,  in  the  soles  of  the  feet,  the 
toes,  and  to  some  extent  in  the  neck,  arms  and  other  parts  of 
the  body.  They  can  sometimes  be  seen  by  the  naked  eye, 
and  are  from  ^  to  ^  of  an  inch  long. 

There  are  a  number  of  other  classes  of  end-bulbs  besides 


40  MECHANISM    AND    PERSONALITY. 

these  of  Pacini  far  more  remote,  and  •  of  various  structures. 
The  nerve-fibrils  are  still  more  minute  and  more  numerous, 
found  in  coils,  spread  out  like  rootlets,  or  with  hair-like  non- 
medullated  endings.  All  these  different  classes  are  inter-mixed, 
much  more  thickly  clustered  in  certain  places  so  that  the  whole 
skin  is  thus  made  the  organ  of  tactual  sensibility.  The  exact 
functions  of  these  several  classes  of  nerve-endings  are  not  yet 
certainly  determined. 

Contact  sensations  are  divided  into  what  is  called  Passive 
Touch  and  Active  Touch.  By  Passive  Touch  is  meant  the 
sensation  due  to  pressure  applied  to  the  body  with  the  least 
possible  motion  of  either  the  part  touched  or  the  object  touch- 
ing. Now  it  is  found  that  not  all  pressure  so  applied  is  dis- 
coverable in  consciousness.  The  pressure  must  reach  a  certain 
intensity,  varying  for  different  parts  of  the  body,  before  it  is 
discovered  by  the  person  touched.  The  least  degree  of  pres- 
sure which  can  be  felt  is  called  the  '  threshold  value  ' ;  as  though 
consciousness  were  an  open  door,  and  sensation  had  to  rise  to 
a  certain  height  before  it  could  flow  in. 

Investigators  tell  us  that  the  least  weight  which  can  be  felt 
on  the  forehead,  temples  and  back  of  the  hand  is  0.002  gramme  ; 
in  the  nose,  lips,  chin,  etc.,  0.005  >  lli  ^ne  s^m  °f  tne  ned>  i 
gramme. 

But  it  is  found  that  not  every  change  in  the  degree  of  pres- 
sure is  discoverable  in  sensation.  Sensations,  even  of  the  same 
kind,  do  not  always  shade  into  each  other.  They  appear  to  go 
per  sattum.  For  example,  if  a  weight  of  three  ounces  be 
placed  upon  a  sensitive  portion  of  the  hand,  or  applied  as  a 
pressure,  and  it  be  increased  to  3y^o",  the  patient  cannot  dis- 
cover that  there  has  been  any  change.  It  may  be  increased  to 
STS-J  to  3^V>  and  still  sensation  will  not  so  change  as  to  be  dis- 
coverable in  consciousness ;  but  when  it  reaches  about  3^-  the 
difference  is  felt  at  once.  This  ratio  3  to  3^  is  approximately 
constant  for  passive  touch  with  this  weight,  but  varies  consider- 


THE   SENSES  —  TOUCH,    TASTE,    AND    SMELL.          4! 

ably  when  much  larger  or  smaller  weights  are  used.  This  dif- 
ference which  is  necessary  to  produce  a  change  in  sensation  is 
called  the  '  difference  threshold/  and  for  passive  touch,  is  about 
as  3  to  341Q-  under  the  conditions  given  above. 

It  is  thought  by  physiologists  that  something  like  this  relation 
runs  through  all  the  senses,  the  ratio  being  different  for  the 
several  senses  and  varying  according  to  the  intensity  of  the 
stimuli.  There  are  difficulties  in  the  way  of  determining  what 
these  several  ratios  are  in  some  of  the  senses,  from  certain  fluc- 
tuations not  accounted  for;  but  there  is  sufficient  ground  to 
think  that  the  main  fact  nevertheless  obtains.  The  principle  is 
known  as  '  Weber's  Law '  and  may  be  enunciated  thus  :  the 
difference  between  any  two  stimuli  must  attain  a  constant  ratio 
to  produce  successive  equal  steps  in  sensation  —  i.e.  if  sensa- 
tion increases  in  an  arithmetical  ratio,  the  stimuli  must  increase 
in  a  geometrical  ratio.  This  is  also  known  in  this  modified 
form  as  Fechner's  Law ;  who,  however,  states  it  in  a  more  pre- 
cise mathematical  way :  the  intensity  of  sensation  varies  with 
the  logarithm  of  the  stimulus. 

But  not  only  do  we  distinguish  sensations  of  touch  as  differ- 
ing in  intensity,  but  also  as  having  place  in  the  body.  This  fact 
of  localizing  stimuli  is  also  quite  marked  in  sight,  and  in  less 
degree  in  hearing.  There  is  considerable  difference  of  opinion 
as  to  how  this  comes  about,  but  the  fact  is  not  disputed. 

It  is  plain  that  if  a  sensation,  as  of  '  red  '  were  confined  to 
the  nerve-sense  of '  redness  '  there  could  be  no  objective  mean- 
ing in  it ;  but  we  not  only  have  the  sensation  of  color,  but  of 
color  localized  somewhere.  So  in  touch :  if  we  simply  felt 
pressure  in  a  general  way,  we  should  not  know  whether  it  were 
hand  or  foot  which  is  pressed.  This  has  nothing  primarily  to 
do  with  the  question  as  to  how  we  learn  to  localize  sensations ; 
but  simply  with  the  fundamental  differences  in  sensation  through 
which  it  becomes  possible  even  to  learn  place-quality  in  sensation. 

The  theory  which  meets  most  favor  is  that  of  '  local  signs ' 


42  MECHANISM   AND    PERSONALITY. 

proposed  by  Lotze.  It  is  briefly,  that  with  the  sensation  proper, 
there  comes  to  consciousness  through  the  organ  of  sense,  a 
somewhat  which  serves  to  distinguish  the  sensation  as  due  to 
a  stimulus  emanating  from  a  definite  place  in  space,  and  which 
he  calls  its  '  local  sign.'  What  the  mechanical  basis  of  these 
local  signs  may  be  is  still  open  to  question. 

The  sense  of  locality  in  the  skin  varies  greatly  in  different 
areas.  The  discriminative  sensibility  in  the  skin  has  been  care- 
fully studied,  the  first  work  in  this  direction  having  been  done 
by  E.  H.  Weber.  He  used  a  pair  of  dividers,  the  blunted 
points  of  which  were  brought  in  contact  with  the  skin,  and  the 
least  distance  apart  of  these  points,  which  produced  two  dis- 
tinct sensations,  was  taken  as  the  measure  of  sensitiveness  of  the 
area.  The  tip  of  the  tongue  is  found  to  be  most  sensitive,  the 
two  points  being  distinguishable  as  distinct  when  only  about 
0.04  of  an  inch  apart.  The  points  of  the  fingers  come  next,  the 
distance  being  about  twice  as  great ;  the  inner  or  red  part  of 
the  lips,  a  fifth  of  an  inch ;  and  so  increasing  in  distance  until 
in  the  middle  of  the  back,  the  upper  arm  and  leg,  the  distance 
has  to  be  about  two  inches  and  a  half. 

Later  investigators  have  established  the  fact  that  there  are 
great  individual  differences  in  this  discrimination  of  two  points, 
some  persons  not  being  more  than  one- fourth  as  sensitive  as 
others,  though  the  relative  acuteness  for  different  parts  of  the 
body  remains  substantially  the  same.  It  is  also  found  that  the 
delicacy  of  discrimination  is  susceptible  of  very  considerable, 
and  even  rapid  cultivation,  especially  in  certain  areas  of  the 
body,  notably  the  fingers. 

These  conclusions  of  Weber  and  his  immediate  followers 
have  been  greatly  modified  by  the  later  studies  of  physiologists, 
especially  Goldscheider.  They  discover  what  are  called  '  pres- 
sure spots.'  Between  these  it  is  impossible  to  excite  the  sen- 
sation of  pressure  at  all.  There  is  sensation  indeed,  but  dull, 
indefinable  and  expressionless. 


THE  SENSES TOUCH,  TASTE,  AND  SMELL.     43 

The  discriminating  sensibility  of  touch  is  greatly  augmented 
by  movement,  or  successive  changes.  The  threshold  value 
and  the  difference  threshold  are  much  more  refined,  but  the 
same  constancy  of  ratios  is  maintained.  It  is  thought  that  the 
experiments  by  Weber,  while  revealing  what  is  quite  true  with 
regard  to  the  skin,  and  its  reaction  practically,  were  not  con- 
ducted with  sufficient  nicety  to  distinguish  between  a  number 
of  factors  involved  in  his  experiments. 

It  will  be  as  well  to  mention  here,  while  speaking  of  the  skin 
and  its  functions,  the  remarkable  discoveries  with  regard  to  the 
sensation  of  temperature.  It  may  be  now  considered  as  estab- 
lished that  only  certain  definite  points  of  the  skin  are  sensitive 
to  heat  and  cold ;  and  what  is  more  astonishing,  these  points 
seem  to  be  distinct ;  that  is  to  say,  the  '  heat-spots '  are  not 
sensitive  to  cold,  nor  are  the  '  cold-spots '  to  heat.  What  is 
more,  these  spots  are  insensible  to  pain  —  even  the  pain  which 
results  from  heat  and  cold.  They  may  be  pierced  by  a  needle 
without  sensation.  In  the  words  of  Professor  Ladd  :  "  By 
using  a  machine  which  locates  the  stimulus  microscopically,  the 
topography  of  the  skin  may  be  mapped  out,  and  extremely 
minute  spots  indicated  which  respond  to  irritation  with  sensa- 
tions of  pain,  of  pressure,  of  cold  and  heat,  respectively. 

"  These  different  kinds  of  sensation  spots  appear  never  to  be 
superposed ;  nor  are  they  located  alike  on  the  symmetrical 
parts  of  the  same  individual,  or  on  the  corresponding  parts  of 
different  individuals.  .  .  . 

"  Heat-spots  are  on  the  whole  less  abundant  than  cold- 
spots  ;  but  in  parts  of  the  body  where  the  skin  is  most  sensitive 
'to  either  heat  or  cold,  the  corresponding  class  of  spots  is  rela- 
tively frequent.  Temperature  spots  may  be  divided  into  first- 
class  and  second-class  (so  Goldscheider)  — according  to  the 
strength  with  which  they  react  on  moderate  stimulation.  Some 
spots  are  roused  only  by  excessive  temperatures.  The  same 
object  feels  cool  to  one  spot,  ice-cold  to  another." 


44  MECHANISM    AND    PERSONALITY. 

While  not  yet  fully  established,  the  reasons  for  considering 
temperature  to  be  a  specific  sense  with  its  own  special  nerves 
and  end-organs  are  very  strong.  Just  what  these  end-organs 
are  is  not  yet  certain.  They  are  quite  distinct  from  those  which 
give  rise  to  pain,  since  they  may  be  in  full  possession  of  their 
sensibility,  while  those  which  give  rise  to  pain  in  the  same  area 
are  rendered  insentient.  Cocaine,  which  renders  an  area  to 
which  it  is  applied  insensible  to  pain,  leaves  the  sensation  of 
temperature  unaffected. 

The  end-organs  of  taste  are  placed  at  the  entrance  of  the 
alimentary  canal,  and  are  probably  confined  to  the  upper  sur- 
face of  the  back  part  of  the  tongue,  the  edges  and  the  tip  of 
the  tongue,  and  the  front  part  of  the  soft  palate,  though  some 
physiologists  claim  that  there  are  other  areas  susceptible  to 
taste  stimulation.  The  middle  of  the  tongue  and  the  surface 
of  the  hard  palate  are  insensible  to  taste  stimuli.  What  this 
stimulus  is,  nobody  knows.  Histologists,  however,  are  sub- 
stantially agreed  as  to  the  structure  and  disposition  of  the  end- 
organs  themselves.  They  are  found  in  the  papillae  of  the  taste 
areas,  and  are  flask-shaped  with  a  short  neck  which  is  towards 
the  outer  surface.  They  are  very  minute,  imbedded  in  the 
mucous  membrane,  surrounded  by  epithelial  cells,  the  opening 
or  pore  being  from  twelve-hundredths  to  four-thousandths  of  an 
inch  in  diameter.  They  are  called  '  gustatory- flasks '  or  '  taste- 
bulbs  '  or  '  knobs '  and  are  quite  complex,  each  bulb  being 
composed  of  from  fifteen  to  thirty  long,  slender  cells  curving  in 
at  the  top  like  the  petals  of  a  bud. 

Only  liquid  bodies,  or  such  as  are  in  some  measure  soluble, 
act  as  stimuli  to  these  end-organs,  and  not  even  all  such  bodies 
have  taste.  As  to  whether  gases  have  taste  or  not  may  be 
considered  an  open  question  inclining  to  the  negative. 

A  number  of  investigators  hold  that  the  sense  can  be 
excited  by  mechanical  means  ;  as  for  example,  that  pressure  on 
the  back  part  of  the  tongue  will  produce  a  bitter,  and  tapping 


THE  SENSES  —  TOUCH,  TASTE,  AND  SMELL.     4$ 

gently  and  repeatedly  on  the  tip,  a  saltish  sensation.  This 
latter  effect  can  be  easily  verified  and  seems  to  be  as  claimed. 
Heat  is  not  a  stimulus,  but  after  much  debate  it  is  now  estab- 
lished that  electricity  is.  If  the  cathode  is  placed  upon  the 
upper  surface  of  the  end  of  the  tongue  a  sensation  described 
as  sourish-metallic,  bitterish-metallic,  etc.,  is  said  to  be  pro- 
duced, while  the  anode  in  the  same  spot  produces  a  somewhat 
similar  but  distinguishable  taste.  Rosenthal,  as  Professor 
Ladd  states,  finds  that  "  when  a  chain  of  four  persons  is  ar- 
ranged in  such  manner  as  to  send  a  current  of  electricity 
through  the  tongue  of  one,  the  eyeball  of  another,  and  the 
muscles  of  a  frog-preparation  held  by  two  of  the  four,  the 
same  current  will  cause  simultaneously  an  acid  taste,  a  flash  of 
light,  and  a  movement  of  the  animal's  muscles." 

It  is  impossible  to  make  any  scientific  classification  of  the 
different  kinds  of  tastes.  The  general  rough  classification  is 
into  sweet,  sour,  salt,  and  bitter.  The  sense  of  smell  enters  so 
largely  into  many  shades  of  taste,  that  it  is  often  difficult  to  say 
offhand  to  which  sense  a  dominant  quality  is  due.  The 
muscular  sense*  is  also  often  involved.  Intense  stimulation  of 
the  taste-organs  excites  marked  effects  in  the  muscular  system. 
The  sympathetic  nerves  also  are  often  involved,  as  for  example, 
in  nausea.  Pungent,  alkaline,  astringent,  and  metallic  tastes 
are  held  to  be  combinations,  and  generally  flavors  of  bodies 
are  complex.  The  sense  varies  through  a  considerable  range 
in  different  persons,  and  is  susceptible  of  a  high  degree  of  cul- 
tivation. Astonishing  stories  are  told  of  the  power  of  profes- 
sional tastes,  as  of  tea,  liquors,  etc.,  to  discriminate  nice  shades 
of  excellence  and  detect  foreign  substances. 

The  sense  of  smell  is  physiologically  the  least  known  of  all 
the  senses.  The  end-organs  are  found  in  the  mucous  mem- 
brane of  the  upper  region  of  the  nasal  cavity  and  guard  the 
opening  of  the  respiratory  tract.  The  olfactory  region  (regio 
olfactorid]  has  a  thicker  mucous  membrane  than  the  lower 


46  MECHANISM    AND    PERSONALITY. 

region  (regio  respiratoria}  of  the  cavity.  It  is  of  a  yellow  or 
brownish-red  character  and  in  it  are  the  olfactory  cells.  The 
cells  are  long,  narrow,  and  spindle-shaped. 

Only  substances  in  a  gaseous  or  volatilized  state  can  stimu- 
late the  organs  of  smell,  and  even  then  the  conditions^  must  be 
favorable.  The  nostrils  may  be  filled  with  any  odorous  parti- 
cles, as  eau  de  Cologne  or  sulphuretted  hydrogen,  without  any 
sense  of  odor  if  there  is  no  movement  of  the  particles,  and 
even  then  the  movement  must  be  inspiratory,  or  from  without 
into  the  lungs.  In  the  contrary  movement  of  the  gas  or  vapor, 
that  is,  in  the  expiratory  movements  of  the  lungs,  there  is  no 
action  on  the  part  of  these  organs. 

Thermal  excitations  do  not  give  rise  to  smell,  and  the  cur- 
rent opinion  is  that  the  sense  cannot  be  produced  by  electrical 
or  mechanical  means,  but  the  matter  is  by  no  means  settled. 

The  degree  of  fineness  of  odoriferous  particles  is  wonderful. 
If  the  air  bearing  an  odor  be  filtered  through  a  tube  filled  with 
cotton  wool,  and  inserted  in  the  nose,  the  smell  is  still  discov- 
erable. It  is  said  that  by  this  means  organisms  which  cause 
putrefaction  and  fermentation  of  TO"  TTTO  °^  an  *nch  *n  diame- 
ter are  removed.  A  grain  of  musk  will  scent  a  room  for  years, 
and  yet  at  the  expiration  of  that  time  no  discoverable  diminu- 
tion of  weight  can  be  detected.  One  part  of  sulphuretted 
hydrogen  in  a  million  parts  of  air  can  be  distinguished. 

There  is  every  reason  to  believe  that  the  lower  animals  have 
a  power  of  smell  far  beyond  that  possessed  by  man  in  his  nor- 
mal state.  The  dog  and  cat  are  especially  furnished  with  in- 
formation through  this  sense.  There  is  a  case  on  record  of  a 
boy  —  James  Mitchell  —  born  blind,  deaf,  and  dumb,  who  could 
at  once  distinguish  a  stranger  by  this  sense,  and  recognized  his 
acquaintances  by  their  distinguishing  odors,  and  as  we  shall 
see,  hypnotic  patients  seem  to  possess  a  power  of  smell  which 
is  marvellous. 

The  classifications  of  odors  have  no  scientific  basis.     The 


THE    SENSES TOUCH,    TASTE,    AND    SMELL.  47 

same  substance  gives  rise  to  different  odors,  to  different  persons, 
or,  if  the  odors  remain  the  same,  their  agreeable,  or  offensive 
character  differs  widely,  not  only  in  different  people  but  with 
the  same  person  at  different  times.  Certain  effects,  commonly 
accounted  smells,  do  not  properly  belong  to  this  sense ;  such 
as  those  called  pungent,  sharp,  and  irritating.  It  is  claimed  by 
some  that  even  an  acid  has  no  smell  proper,  but  that  its  action 
is  due  to  mechanic  irritation. 

The  first  effect  of  smell  is  strongest.  The  first  sniff  of  a  rose 
is  sweetest  and  most  intense ;  after  being  inhaled  for  a  moment 
the  scent  appears  to  die  away.  This  may  be  due,  it  has  been 
suggested,  to  a  rapid  coating  of  the  olfactory  membrane,  but  is 
more  probably  a  subjective  effect.  It  is  thought  that  '  odors 
of  animal  effluvia  are  of  a  higher  specific  gravity  than  the  air, 
and  do  not  readily  diffuse,  —  a  fact  which  may  account  for  the 
pointer  and  bloodhound  keeping  their  noses  to  the  ground.' 


48  MECHANISM    AND    PERSONALITY. 


CHAPTER   VI. 

THE    SENSE   OF    HEARING. 

The  ear.  Structure.  Cord's  organ.  Theories.  Physical  basis  of 
sound.  Intensity,  pitch,  quality.  Illustrations.  Partials.  Tyndall  quoted. 
Difference  in  people's  sensibility.  Powers  of  discrimination.  Range.  The 
human  voice. 

THE  organ  of  hearing,  the  ear,  is  an  extremely  complex 
mechanism.  It  consists  of  an  external,  a  middle  and 
an  inner  ear.  The  functions  of  the  external  ear,  —  consisting 
of  the  auricle  or  convoluted  cartilage  at  the  side  of  the  head, 
and  the  crooked  tubular  passage  {external  meatus)  do  not 
seem  to  be  important  except  for  admitting  vibrations  of  the 
air  to  the  mechanism  within.  The  external  cavity  may  be  en- 
tirely filled  with  wax  or  tallow,  and,  if  a  passage  by  a  tube  be 
left  to  the  middle  ear,  sounds  are  rather  more  distinctly  heard ; 
though  it  is  thought  that  certain  minor  modifications  of  tones 
are  affected  through  the  external  apparatus.  The  external  mea- 
tus  is  a  perfect  protection  to  the  ear  drum,  being  a  passage  one 
and  a  quarter  inches  long,  and  somewhat  bent  downwards  and 
backwards. 

The  tympanum,  or  drum  or  middle  ear,  is  a  chamber  irregu- 
lar in  form,  across  which  is  stretched  the  tympanic  membrane 
—  itself  complex,  consisting  of  three  distinct  layers.  Immedi- 
ately behind  this  membrane  are  three  small,  curiously  shaped 
bones  called  the  hammer,  the  anvil  and  the  stirrup  stretching 
across  the  cavity  from  the  tympanic  membrane  to  the  inner 
wall.  The  handle  of  the  hammer  (malleus)  is  connected  with 
the  middle  of  the  tympanic  membrane,  and  its  head  fits  into  a 


THE    SENSE    OF    HEARING.  49 

cavity  of  the  anvil  (incus)  and  has  a  delicate  articulatory  move- 
ment with  it.  One  of  the  two  processes  of  the  incus  ends  in 
a  rounded  head  and  articulates  with  the  stapes  or  stirrup.  At 
its  interior  wall  the  middle  ear  opens  into  the  Eustachian  tube, 
a  canal  communicating  with  the  nasal  compartment  of  the 
pharynx.  The  office  of  the  middle  ear  seems  to  be  chiefly  to 
transmit  vibrations  to  the  inner  ear,  though  doubtless  it  per- 
forms important  modifying  functions  not  yet  fully  understood. 

The  internal  ear,  called  also  the  labyrinth  from  its  com- 
plexity, is  the  part  of  the  auditory  apparatus  in  which  the  true 
end- organs  of  hearing  are  placed.  Without  attempting  to  enter 
upon  details  it  must  suffice  to  say  that  it  consists  of  three  parts 
known  as  the  vestibule,  the  semicircular  canals,  and  the  coch- 
lea. Of  these  the  cochlea  is  by  far  the  most  complex.  The 
osseous  cochlea  is  a  tube  wound  two  and  three-quarters  times 
round  a  pillar  as  an  axis,  like  the  shell  of  a  snail,  both  pillar 
and  tube  diminishing  rapidly  in  diameter  from  base  to  apex. 
The  enclosed  membranous  mechanism  here  is  marvellous  in 
the  extreme ;  but  we  pass  on  to  the  remarkable  arrangement 
of  cells  discovered  by  the  March  ese  Corti,  and  so  called  the 
organ  of  Corti.  It  is  a  membrane  composed  in  part  of  fibres 
which  are  stretched  at  right  angles  to  the  longer  axis,  i.e.  radi- 
ally. This  membrane  is  furnished  with  10,500  'rods  '  or  'pil- 
lars of  Corti,'  arranged  in  an  inner  and  outer  row  and  increasing 
in  length  from  the  base  to  the  apex  of  the  cochlea.  Each  set 
of  rods  has  a  row  of  hair-cells  so-called  nearly  parallel  with  it, 
and  these  are  covered  with  a  delicate  perforated  membrane. 
The  hair-cells  communicate  with  the  auditory  nerve  and  so 
with  the  brain. 

There  is  considerable  obscurity  yet,  as  to  the  exact  action 
of  this  auditory  apparatus,  but  there  is  little  doubt  that  it  is 
purely  mechanical.  At  one  time  Helmholtz  thought  that  the 
rods  of  Corti  responded  to  the  vibrations  communicated  to 
them,  such  vibrations  throwing  into  action  those  fibres  which 


50  MECHANISM    AND    PERSONALITY. 

were  in  sympathetic  accord ;  and  since  the  estimated  number 
of  these  would  allow  thirty-three  filaments  for  each  semitone 
through  the  whole  range  of  audition,  there  would  be  nearly 
enough  to  answer  to  every  shade  of  tone ;  but  even  if  the 
number  fell  short,  it  was  shown  that  nicer  shades  were  possible 
by  the  composite  action  of  the  two  filaments  between  which 
the  sound  might  fall.  Recent  histological  researches,  however, 
have  led  to  some  modifications  of  this  theory,  especially  as  it 
is  found  that  there  are  no  rods  of  Corti  in  the  cochlea  of  birds, 
and  it  can  hardly  be  doubted  that  they  have  an  appreciation 
of  pitch.  "  Hensen  and  Helmholtz  have  now  suggested  the  view 
that  not  only  may  the  segments  of  the  '  membrana  basilaris ' 
be  stretched  more  in  the  radial  than  in  the  longitudinal  direc- 
tion, but  different  segments  may  be  stretched  radially  with 
different  degrees  of  tension,  so  as  to  resemble  a  series  of  tense 
strings  of  gradually  increasing  length.  Each  string  would  then 
resound  to  a  vibration  of  a  particular  pitch  communicated  to 
it.  The  exact  mechanism  of  the  hair-cells,  and  of  the  mem- 
brana reticularis,  which  looks  like  a  damping  apparatus,  is 
unknown." 

Sounds  may  be  divided  into  two  classes,  noises  and  musical 
tones.  Whether  there  are  separate  end-organs  through  which 
these  two  classes  are  conveyed  to  the  brain-cells  is  not  defi- 
nitely known ;  but,  however  this  may  be,  it  is  certain  that  the 
stimuli  in  either  class  is  motion  which  causes  the  air  to  be 
thrown  into  agitation,  or  tremor,  as  by  a  blow  or  oscillation 
of  some  external  body.  The  fact  that  there  is  no  discoverable 
relation  between  the  power  of  distinguishing  noises  and  of 
appreciating  musical  tones,  gives  plausibility  to  the  theory  that 
they  are  due  to  distinct  mechanisms  in  the  nerve-endings. 
The  two  classes  are  clearly  distinguished  mechanically  at  all 
events.  In  tones  there  is  found  to  be  regular  recurrent  motion, 
the  period  or  time  of  the  recurrence  being  uniform,-  and  so 
called  periodic.  In  noises  there  is  an  absence  of  this  element, 


THE    SENSE    OF    HEARING.  51 

but  instead,  confusion  and  lack  of  uniformity.  Noises,  how- 
ever, can  be  detected  in  almost  all  musical  tones,  as  the  scrap- 
ing of  the  bow  in  the  violin,  the  whir  of  the  air  in  the  flute, 
and  the  rattle  of  action  and  strings  in  the  piano.  So  also  in 
noises,  tones  can  almost  always  be  detected  by  a  trained  ear, 
as  in  the  ring  of  a  hammer,  the  creaking  wheels,  and  the 
resonance  of  an  explosion. 

Any  regular  recurrent  motion  gives  rise  to  a  tone.  A  suf- 
ficient illustration,  though  not  the  most  perfect,  is  found  in 
Savart's  machine,  which  is  simply  a  toothed  wheel,  the  teeth 
striking  upon  a  bit  of  card-board  in  the  revolution  of  the  wheel. 
When  the  wheel  moves  slowly  so  that  the  taps  reach,  say,  40 
or  50  in  a  second,  a  very  low  tone  is  produced,  and  as  the 
velocity  is  increased  the  tone  runs  up  till  it  reaches  the  highest 
pitch.  This  machine  presents  the  mechanical  action  most  per- 
fectly to  the  eye,  but  the  'Siren,'  which  simply  makes  and 
breaks  a  current  of  air,  is  far  more  perfect. 

The  Science  of  Acoustics  has  for  its  object  the  development 
of  the  mechanical  phenomena  of  periodic  motion  in  sound,  and 
the  mathematicians  have  given  a  very  complete  analysis  of  the 
whole  subject.  We  are  compelled  to  content  ourselves  with  a 
brief  outline. 

A  body  under  a  central  or  directed  force  must  move  accord- 
ing to  the  laws  of  mechanics,  in  one  or  other  of  the  class  of 
curves  known  as  conies,  so  called  because  they  may  all  be  cut 
from  the  surface  of  a  cone  by  a  plane.  Gravitation  is  such  a 
force,  and  the  motions  of  the  bodies  of  the  solar  system  are 
examples  of  periodic  motion.  A  common  pendulum  is  the 
simplest  exemplification  of  such  motion.  Galileo  discovered 
from  a  swinging  lamp  in  a  church,  it  is  said,  that,  although  the 
arc  through  which  the  pendulum  swings  gradually  loses  in 
length  on  account  of  the  resistance  of  the  atmosphere  and 
friction,  the  beat  or  time  of  the  swing  remains  constant.  So  in 
all  periodic  motion,  the  time  in  which  an  excursion  is  made 


52  MECHANISM    AND    PERSONALITY. 

is  entirely  independent  of  the  amplitude,  or  extent,  of  the  path. 
This  principle  lies  at  the  bottom  of  all  sustained  or  musical 
tones. 

Now  elasticity,  or  the  energy  of  restitution  when  a  particle 
is  disturbed  in  an  elastic  medium,  is  a  directed  force,  and 
for  small  distances  this  law  of  periodic  motion  holds  for  all 
oscillations.  A  displaced  particle  is  driven  back  by  this  force 
of  restitution,  but  by  virtue  of  the  kinetic  energy  generated  in 
its  return,  it  passes  its  original  place  of  rest,  and  swings  to  the 
other  side,  and  so  back  and  forth,  until  the  moving  energy  is 
exhausted,  but  taking  just  as  long  a  time  to  make  its  final  and 
least  movement  as  it  did  for  the  first  and  greatest.  This  swing 
or  pendulous  motion  (called  vibration)  in  conic  curves  (a 
straight  line  is  a  particular  case  of  an  ellipse)  is  the  mechanical 
basis  of  the  undulatory  or  wave  theory  of  sound,  light,  heat, 
and,  we  may  say,  of  all  physical  phenomena. 

To  affect  the  ear,  the  air,  which  is  an  elastic  medium,  must 
be  thrown  into  a  state  of  agitation,  and  the  impact  of  the  air 
particles  upon  the  tympanic  membrane  causes  it  to  vibrate, 
and  these  vibrations  are  transmitted  through  the  wonderful 
mechanisms  of  the  ear  until  they  finally  reach  the  end-organs 
of  the  auditory  nerve,  and  are  thence  conveyed  by  nerve-fibres 
to  the  brain. 

Now  the  elementary  motions,  or  excursions  of  the  molecules 
which,  transmitted,  give  rise  to  a  pulse  or  wave,  are  performed 
in  a  very  small  space.  These  minute  motions  are  characterized 
by  three  distinct  variations  with  respect  to  the  path  or  orbit 
over  which  they  move.  First,  the  orbit  may  be  large  or  small. 
If  large,  the  velocity,  and  consequently  the  moving  energy, 
must  be  great  compared  with  a  smaller  path  and  slower  motion, 
the  time  being  constant.  This  causes  the  impact  or  blow  on 
the  tympanic  membrane  to  be  greater  for  large  orbits  than  for 
small :  that  is,  the  loudness  or  intensity  of  sound  depends  upon 
the  amplitude  of  the  impinging  air  particles. 


THE    SENSE    OF    HEARING.  53 

The  second  variation  is  in  time.  The  orbital  or  periodic 
times  of  the  moving  molecules  may  be  greater  or  less  according 
to  the  rapidity  of  movement  of  the  body  which  gives  rise  to  the 
vibrations.  The  greater  the  number  of  vibrations  in  any  given 
time,  as  a  second,  the  higher  or  sharper  the  tone.  This  is  what 
is  called  '  pitch.'  The  lower  limit,  or  gravest  sound  audible  to 
most  ears,  is  about  30  vibrations  to  the  second  :  the  upper 
limit,  or  most  acute  sound,  has  about  30,000  to  the  second. 

The  third  variation  is  in  the  form  of  the  path  in  which  the 
molecules  move.  If  a  pendulum  formed  of  a  cord  and  weight 
attached  be  started  to  vibrate,  the  time  of  vibration  will  remain 
constant  so  long  as  the  length  of  the  cord  is  unchanged,  though 
the  pendulum  bob  be  made  to  describe  any  sort  of  figure  (as 
it  would  be  seen  from  above),  as  for  example  a  straight  line,  an 
ellipse,  or  a  figure  eight.  There  may  be  any  number  of  small 
motions  superposed  upon  the  main  path,  like  the  motions  of 
the  moon,  which,  while  moving  around  the  sun,  has  at  the  same 
time,  a  motion  around  the  earth,  as  well  as  divers  other  minute 
perturbations.  This  variation  in  the  form  of  the  path  gives  rise 
to  what  is  called  'character,'  '  timbre,'  'klang,'  or  quality  of 
tone. 

To  illustrate  :  if  a  tuning-fork  on  its  stand  be  struck,  the 
rapidity  of  movement  of  the  two  prongs  will  always  be  the 
same  for  the  same  fork,  whether  the  blow  be  soft  or  hard. 
This  gives  the  same  time  for  excursions  of  the  air  particles,  and 
so  the  '  pitch  '  and  the  '  timbre  '  remain  constant  for  that  par- 
ticular fork.  Hence  it  is  that  tuning-forks  have  to  be  selected 
for  the  particular  pitch,  or  note,  they  are  desired  to  give.  But 
if  the  same  fork  be  struck  softly,  and  then  with  greater  force, 
there  is  a  marked  difference  in  the  intensity  of  the  sound. 
The  swing  of  the  prongs  is  greater,  and  the  excursions  of  the 
air  particles  are  of  greater  amplitude,  so  that  the  effect  on  the 
ear  is  to  give  greater  loudness  for  the  heavy  stroke  than  for 
the  soft  one ;  that  is,  the  '  intensity  '  differs  for  the  two  notes. 


54  MECHANISM    AND    PERSONALITY. 

Again,  if  two  different  tuning-forks  are  making,  one  528 
vibrations  in  a  second,  and  the  other  792,  the  first  will  be 
middle  C  and  the  second  G  above,  and  almost  any  ear  will 
discover  that  the  first  is  more  grave  than  the  other.  This  is 
a  difference  in  '  pitch.' 

Once  more,  if  a  particular  note,  as  middle  C,  be  sounded  on 
two  different  kinds  of  instruments,  as  a  flute  and  a  clarionet,  or 
a  violin  and  a  piano,  although  they  may  be  exactly  the  same 
pitch  and  loudness,  they  are  easily  distinguishable.  This  is 
called  '  timbre  '  or  '  quality.'  It  is  due  to  the  difference  in  the 
form  of  the  path  in  which  the  excursion  of  the  air  particles  is 
performed ;  and  this  difference  is  caused  by  superposed  move- 
ments upon  the  elementary  path,  called  '  overtones  '  or  '  par- 
tials ' :  that  is  to  say,  along  with  the  principle  tone  there  are 
other  tones  sounding  at  the  same  time,  and  it  is  hardly  possible 
to  get  a  tone  perfectly  simple  or  free  frclm  these  riders ;  which 
are  also  called  '  harmonics.'  When  a  note  is  most  nearly 
simple  it  is  thin,  meagre,  and  insipid.  The  lower  harmonics 
give  to  the  fundamental  tone  richness  and  fulness,  while  the 
higher  give  brilliancy  and  thrill. 

The  manner  in  which  bodies  break  up  into  multiform  vibrat- 
ing segments  cannot  be  better  illustrated,  perhaps,  than  by  the 
following  extract  from  one  of  Dr.  TyndalPs  lectures  on  sound. 
He  says  :  "  We  are  now  prepared  to  appreciate  an  extremely 
beautiful  experiment,  for  which  we  are  indebted  to  Professor 
Wheatstone,  and  which  I  am  now  able  to  make  before  you. 
In  a  room  underneath  this,  and  separated  from  it  by  two  floors, 
is  a  piano.  Through  the  two  floors  passes  a  tin  tube  2\  inches 
in  diameter,  and  along  the  axis  of  this  tube  passes  a  rod  of 
deal,  the  end  of  which  emerges  from  the  floor  in  front  of  the 
lecture  table.  The  rod  is  clasped  by  india-rubber  bands,  which 
entirely  close  the  tin  tube.  The  lower  end  of  the  rod  rests 
upon  the  sound-board  of  the  piano,  its  upper  end  being  exposed 
before  you.  An  artist  is  at  this  moment  engaged  at  the  instru- 


THE   SENSE    OF    HEARING.  55 

ment,  but  you  hear  no  sound.  I  place  this  violin  upon  the  end 
of  the  rod ;  the  violin  becomes  instantly  musical,  not,  however, 
with  the  vibrations  of  its  own  strings  but  with  those  of  the 
piano.  I  remove  the  violin,  the  sound  ceases;  I  put  in  its 
place  a  guitar,  and  the  music  revives.  For  the  violin  and 
guitar  I  substitute  this  plain  wooden  tray ;  it  is  also  rendered 
musical.  Here,  finally,  is  a  harp,  against  the  sound-board  of 
which  I  cause  the  end  of  the  deal  rod  to  press ;  every  note  of 
the  piano  is  reproduced  before  you.  I  lift  the  harp  so  as  to 
break  its  connection  with  the  piano,  the  sound  vanishes ;  but 
the  moment  I  cause  the  sound-board  to  press  upon  the  rod, 
the  music  is  restored.  The  sound  of  the  piano  so  far  resembles 
that  of  the  harp  that  it  is  hard  to  resist  the  impression  that  the 
music  you  hear  is  that  of  the  latter  instrument.  An  uneducated 
person  might  well  believe  that  witchcraft  is  concerned  in  the 
production  of  this  music. 

"  What  a  curious  transferrence  of  action  is  here  presented  to 
the  mind  !  At  the  command  of  the  musician's  will  his  fingers 
strike  the  keys ;  the  hammers  strike  the  strings,  by  which  the 
rude  mechanical  shock  is  shivered  into  tremors.  The  vibra- 
tions are  communicated  to  the  sound-board  of  the  piano. 
Upon  that  board  rests  the  end  of  the  deal  rod,  thinned  off  to 
a  sharp  edge  to  make  it  fit  more  easily  between  the  wires. 
Through  this  edge,  and  afterwards  along  the  rod,  are  poured 
with  unfailing  precision  the  entangled  pulsations  produced  by 
the  shocks  of  those  ten  agile  fingers.  To  the  sound-board  of 
the  harp  before  you  the  rod  faithfully  delivers  up  the  vibrations 
of  which  it  is  the  vehicle.  This  sound-board  transfers  the 
motion  to  the  air,  curving  it  and  chasing  it  into  forms  so  trans- 
cendently  complicated  that  confusion  alone  could  be  antici- 
pated from  the  shocks  and  jostle  of  the  sonorous  waves.  But 
the  marvellous  human  ear  accepts  every  feature  of  the  motion ; 
and  all  the  strife  and  struggle  and  confusion  melt  finally  into 
music  upon  the  brain." 


56  MECHANISM    AND    PERSONALITY. 

There  is  a  marked  difference  in  the  sensibility  of  different 
people  to  sounds,  although  they  may  have  what  is  called  perfect 
hearing.  This  is  especially  true  in  the  higher  range.  When 
the  test  is  made,  certain  people  are  surprised  to  find  that  their 
ears  fail  to  respond  to  tones  which  are  distinctly  heard  by 
others  not  supposed  to  be  any  better.  What  the  range  is  in 
the  lower  animal  kingdom  cannot  be  satisfactorily  ascertained, 
but  there  seems  to  be  good  reason  for  supposing  that  there 
may  be  a  whole  world  of  sound,  especially  for  insects,  which 
we  count  silence. 

The  niceness  of  discrimination  in  the  differences  of  tone  in  a 
practised  ear  is  amazing.  Some  musicians  can  detect  about  the 
i  of  a  vibration ;  and  on  the  other  hand,  it  is  not  uncommon 
to  find  people  who  cannot  distinguish  semitones,  or  even  tones. 
When  a  note  has  a  number  of  vibrations  exactly  double  that  of 
another,  the  second  is  said  to  be  the  octave  of  the  first ;  and  if 
the  number  of  vibrations  in  this  last  be  doubled  again  it  is  the 
second  octave  ;  and  so  on  up.  The  range  of  the  ear  is  about 
eleven  octaves.  A  note  and  its  octave  have  such  extraordinary 
likeness  to  each  other  that  if  not  sounded  in  pretty  quick  suc- 
cession many,  even  cultivated  ears,  fail  to  detect  the  difference  ; 
and  the  explanation  of  the  likeness  in  a  psychical  point  of  view 
is  difficult  if  not  impossible.  A  man  and  a  woman  singing  the 
same  note  in  accord  seem,  to  most  persons,  to  be  using  the 
same  pitch,  when  in  reality  they  are  commonly  an  octave  apart. 
There  are,  however,  some  women's  voices  pitched  as  low  as  a 
man's.  Few  persons  have  any  notion  of  '  absolute  pitch,'  that 
is,  have  the  power  to  tell  the  pitch  of  a  note  sounded  apart 
from  any  note  of  known  pitch,  sounding  at  or  near  the  same 
time.  It  is  said  that  this  gift  is  not  possessed  by  more  than 
one  in  a  hundred,  while  perhaps  about  the  same  ratio  of  people 
have  no  notion  of  differences  in  pitch  under  any  circumstances. 
Such  people  are  music-deaf  as  some  are  color-blind. 

The  complete  range  of  sounds  for  musical  purposes  is  reck- 


THE    SENSE    OF    HEARING.  57 

oned  at  about  nine  octaves,  though  something  must  be  cut  off 
the  top  and  bottom  for  all  practical  purposes,  making  the  effec- 
tive range  between  six  and  seven  octaves ;  or,  in  vibrations, 
between  40  and  4000  to  the  second.  Organ  pipes  are  actually 
made  to  embrace  this  entire  interval,  that  is  to  say,  from  two 
octaves  below  the  lowest  note  of  a  bass  voice,  to  about  three 
octaves  above  C  in  alt.  This  gives  a  difference  in  length  of 
pipe  from  J  of  an  inch  to  32  feet :  but  an  air  played  in  the 
lowest  or  highest  octave  can  scarcely  if  at  all  be  recognized. 

Without  going  into  detail,  there  are  six  notes  in  the  diatonic 
scale  interpolated  between  each  two  octaves  with  somewhat 
varying  intervals.  The  intervals  between  the  several  notes 
expressed  in  the  relative  number  of  vibrations  are  in  the  scale 
of  C  proximately  f ,  f ,  f ,  f,  -f ,  -1/. 

In  man  the  voice  is  due  to  the  vocal  organ  which  is  placed  at 
the  top  of  the  windpipe,  the  extremity  of  which  is  almost  closed 
by  two  elastic  membranes,  called  the  vocal  cords.  These  are 
caused  to  vibrate  by  the  passage  of  air  from  the  lungs  through 
the  trachea  or  windpipe,  and  are  made  to  vary  in  tension,  by  a 
wonderful  muscular  arrangement,  so  as  to  cover  a  large  range 
in  pitch  and  intensity.  Suppose  two  india-rubber  bands  to  be 
stretched  over  the  mouth  of  a  fairly  large  glass  tube,  leaving  a 
slit  between  them,  and  air  to  be  forced  through  this  slit.  These 
edges  would  be  thrown  into  vibrations  of  greater  or  less  rapidity 
according  to  the  tension.  This  is  very  like  the  action  of  the 
vocal  cords,  only  remembering  that  this  tension  is  regulated 
by  one  at  will.  The  sweetness  and  firmness  of  voice  is  deter- 
mined by  the  smoothness  and  evenness  of  the  edges  of  this 
slit  in  the  glottis,  and  the  accuracy  with  which  they  fit  together 
at  regular  intervals  in  opening  and  closing.  If  the  edges  are 
jagged,  or  strike  each  other  in  vibrating,  the  voice  is  harsh,  or 
husky.  The  excellence  of  the  organ  will  depend  upon  the 
rapidity  and  certainty  with  which  the  cords  can  be  stretched 
or  relaxed,  the  opening  enlarged  and  contracted,  and  especially 


58  MECHANISM    AND    PERSONALITY. 

upon  the  form  of  the  cavity  of  the  mouth  for  sustaining  and 
re-enforcing  the  sounds  which  proceed  from  the  glottis. 

In  men,  by  the  development  of  the  larynx,  the  vocal  cords 
become  much  elongated,  as  compared  with  those  of  women, 
the  ratio  being  as  3  to  2,  so  that  the  male  voice  is  lower  in 
pitch  and  stronger  and  fuller.  A  rapid  change  takes  place  in  the 
development  of  the  cords  in  boys  at  the  age  of  puberty :  they 
become  for  a  time  uncertain  and  squeaky,  and  generally  fall  an 
octave  in  pitch.  There  is  a  considerable  increase  of  the  glottis 
of  the  girl  also,  but  only  about  one-half  that  of  the  boy,  and 
the  voice  does  not  change.  In  advanced  life,  or  by  disease, 
decided  changes  take  place  in  the  physical  conditions  of  the 
vocal  organs,  with  a  consequent  change  in  voice ;  but  a  great 
deal  of  the  change  in  most  people's  voices  is  due  to  a  lack  of 
attention  or  care  in  keeping  the  vocal  cords  up  to  their  work. 

The  range  of  the  human  voice  is  quite  variable.  The  ordi- 
nary register  is  about  two  octaves,  but  certain  rare  voices  have 
a  range  of  three  and  a  half.  An  extraordinary  case  is  recorded 
upon  the  authority  of  Mozart  —  that  of  Lucrezia  Ajugari,  who 
gave  purely  the  third  octave  above  middle  C,  while  she  trilled 
freely  on  the  re  below.  Hers  was  the  most  remarkable  high- 
pitched  voice  ever  known,  —  an  octave  and  a  half  above  the 
ordinary  soprano.  A  basso  named  Gaspard  Forster  passed 
from  the  fa  of  the  third  octave  below  middle  C  to  la  above, 
the  lower  end  of  his  register  being  a  full  octave  below  that  of 
the  ordinary  bass. 

Helmholtz  has  shown  that  the  conformation  of  the  cavity  of 
the  mouth  acts  as  a  resonator,  and  so  has  very  much  to  do 
with  the  volume  and  elasticity  of  the  voice,  and  the  original 
structure  of  the  whole  vocal  apparatus  determines  the  power 
and  smoothness  of  one's  vocalization  in  speech  and  song ;  but 
a  large  margin  is  still  left  in  which  one's  own  effort  can  modify 
favorably  or  the  reverse ;  and  commonly,  in  this  country,  it  is 
for  the  worse.  We  may  as  well  confess  that  the  American 


THE   SENSE    OF    HEARING.  59 

voice,  in  speech,  as  a  rule,  is  the  worst  in  the  world.  The  one 
wretched  fault  is  nasality.  This  is  not  the  work  of  nature,  but 
is  the  result  of  volitional  neglect,  or  falsely  directed  effort. 
There  is  scarcely  one  person  in  a  hundred  in  this  country  who 
has  not  made  his  or  her  voice  thin  and  nasal,  by  not  using  the 
right  muscles  in  regulating  the  tension  of  the  vocal  cords, 
driving  out  of  the  voice  the  lower  overtones  which  give  it  rich- 
ness, volume,  and  fulness. 


60  MECHANISM    AND    PERSONALITY. 


CHAPTER   VII. 

THE   SENSE   OF   VISION. 

Mechanism  of  the  eye.  Structure  of  retina.  End-organs.  Rods  and 
cones.  Mechanical  basis  of  vision.  Color.  '  Consecutive  '  images.  Tone, 
intensity,  saturation.  Yellow  spot. 

THE  eye  is,  if  possible,  more  wonderful  in  its  mechanism 
than  the  ear.  It  is  primarily  a  complete  optical  instru- 
ment, and,  as  such,  sufficiently  wonderful ;  but  the  refinement 
of  mechanical  contrivance  is  found,  not  in  the  optical  arrange- 
ment but  in  the  preparation  of  light,  by  the  end-organs  in  the 
retina  to  be  transmitted  to  the  brain. 

In  the  optical  arrangement  of  the  instrument  there  are  the 
following  transparent  media  —  the  '  cornea,'  the  '  aqueous 
humor,'  the  'crystalline  lens,'  and  the  'vitreous  humor.'  The 
cornea  is  the  outer,  horny  covering  of  the  eyeball  which  is 
transparent,  and  the  outer  and  inner  surfaces  being  parallel,  it 
exerts  no  effect  in  refracting  or  bending  the  rays  of  light.  All 
the  other  media  do  exert  such  power ;  but  by  far  the  most 
considerable  effect  in  this  way  is  produced  by  the  '  crystalline 
lens.'  This  is  placed  just  behind  the  diaphragm  of  the  iris 
which  automatically  regulates  the  admission  of  light  by  enlarg- 
ing or  contracting  the  pupil.  The  crystalline  is  a  bi-convex 
lens  with  its  axis  on  a  line  with  the  centre  of  the  pupil,  and 
covering  in  extent  the  pupil  and  iris.  Its  front  surface  is  not 
so  much  curved  as  the  posterior  surface,  and  by  the  arrange- 
ment of  certain  delicate  muscles,  the  front  surface  is  made  to 
bow  more  or  less  in  order  to  accommodate  the  eye  to  the  rays  of 
light  from  objects  at  different  distances.  The  posterior  surface 


THE    SENSE    OF    VISION.  6l 

remains  fixed  in  curvature.  It  is  not  homogeneous  in  structure, 
but  composed  of  layers  like  an  onion.  This  is  an  arrangement 
of  Nature  to  correct  for  .chromatic  and  spherical  aberration. 

From  the  cornea  to  the  posterior  surface  of  the  lens  the  dis- 
tance is  about  one-third  of  the  optical  axis.  All  the  remaining 
portion  of  the  interior  of  the  eyeball  is  filled  with  the  '  vitreous 
humor,'  which  is  as  translucent  as  glass,  and  jelly-like  in  con- 
sistency. It  does  not  seem  to  have  any  very  great  significance 
physiologically  or  optically,  but  to  be  intended  rather  to  hold 
everything  compact  within  the  eyeball. 

Next  the  vitreous  humor  comes  the  '  retina,'  which  lines  the 
whole  of  the  back  part  of  the  eyeball,  extending  about  two-thirds 
of  the  way  towards  the  front.  Behind  the  retina  comes  the  '  cho- 
roid  coat'  which  is  the  middle  one  of  the  three  envelopes,  or 
tunics,  of  the  eyeball.  It  is  quite  dark,  inclining  to  black,  and 
extends  far  forward,  joining  on  to  the  iris  in  front.  It  is  abun- 
dantly supplied  with  blood-vessels  and  nerves.  In  Albinos,  and 
in  many  mammals  also,  it  contains  no  pigment,  though  the 
structure  is  the  same ;  which  gives  their  eyes  a  peculiar  irides- 
cent lustre.  In  the  horse,  and  in  ruminant  animals  this  lustre 
of  the  eye  is  also  seen,  but  it  is  due  to  the  reflection  of  bundles 
of  tissue.  In  cats  it  is  due,  according  to  Schultze,  to  cells  contain- 
ing double  refractory  crystals.  When  this  coat  is  dark  a  part  of 
the  light  which  enters  the  eye  is  absorbed,  and  the  pupil  is  black. 

It  has  been  suggested  that  in  those  animals  presenting  an 
iridescence  the  eye  is  probably  more  sensitive  to  light  of  feeble 
intensity.  The  iris,  which  is  really  a  continuation  of  the  cho- 
roid  coat,  is  too  well  known  to  require  description. 

Outside  of  all  is  the  '  sclerotic  coat,'  which  with  the  cornea 
forms  a  complete  protective  covering  of  the  entire  instrument, 
except  where  it  is  pierced  by  the  optic  nerve,  shortly  to  be 
noticed.  It  is  a  firm,  unyielding,  fibrous  membrane,  white, 
except  the  cornea,  which  is  transparent.  To  it  are  attached 
the  muscles  for  the  movement  of  the  eyeball. 


62  MECHANISM   AND    PERSONALITY. 

There  are  many  accessory  arrangements  of  the  most  delicate 
nature  for  the  protection  and  management  of  the  eye,  such  as 
eyelids,  eyebrows,  lachrymal  apparatus,  etc.,  which  in  this 
mere  outline  we  need  not  stop  to  consider.  To  understand 
the  eye  in  its  marvellous  perfections  would  be  a  study  in  itself. 

All  that  part  of  the  eye  in  front  of  the  retina  is  simply  an 
optical  arrangement  by  which  an  image  is  produced  upon  the 
retina,  such  as  may  be  accomplished  by  any  bi-convex  lens, 
only  infinitely  more  perfect.  The  image  is  inverted,  as  must 
be  the  case,  with  such  a  lens. 

In  the  retina  are  placed  the  end-organs  of  vision,  and  their 
natural  stimulus  is  light.  There  is  some  question  as  to  whether 
they  can  be  excited  by  mechanical  or  electrical  means.  Such 
stimuli  do  without  doubt  produce  luminous  impressions  when 
applied  either  to  the  optic  nerve  or  the  eyeball,  but  it  is  doubt- 
ful whether  the  retina  itself  is  affected  by  any  stimulus  but 
light.  It  is  thought  that  there  is  some  chemical  action  on  the 
retina,  but  what,  is  not  yet  well  ascertained. 

The  optic  nerve  pierces  the  sclerotic  coat  and  enters  the 
retina  about  ^  of  an  inch  to  the  inner  or  nasal  side  of  the  optical 
axis.  The  diameter  of  the  optic  nerve  where  it  pierces  the  retina 
is  about  -j^  of  an  inch,  varying  somewhat  in  different  eyes,  and 
since  at  the  point  of  entrance  the  nerve  is  wholly  insensible  to 
light  stimulus,  it  forms  what  is  called  the  '  blind-spot.'  By  a  little 
contrivance  any  one  can  easily  discover  it  in  his  own  eye.  Ex- 
actly in  the  centre  of  the  retina — the  place  of  most  perfect  optical 
effect,  is  the  '  yellow  spot,'  with  a  diameter  between  Jg-  and  ^  of 
an  inch.  This  spot  is  best  developed  in  man,  and  apes  among 
mammals,  though  it  has  been  shown  to  exist  in  reptiles. 

The  retina  is  a  highly  complex  structure,  colorless  and  trans- 
lucent, very  soft,  composed  of  numberless  cells,  fibres,  end- 
organs,  connective  tissues  and  blood-vessels,  arranged  accord- 
ing to  Max  Schultze,  —  a  high  authority,  —  in  ten  layers,  in- 
cluding the  inner  pigment  cells  of  the  choroid.  It  is  not 


THE    SENSE    OF    VISION.  63 

necessary  to  go  into  details,  but  beginning  at  the  delicate  mem- 
brane which  forms  the  inner  lining  of  the  retina,  there  lie 
immediately  behind,  and  parallel  to  it,  the  nerve-fibres,  raying 
out  in  every  direction  from  the  optic  nerve.  They  surround, 
but  do  not  cover,  the  yellow  spot,  where  they  are  thickest, 
gradually  thinning  out  towards  the  edges  of  the  retina. 

The  several  layers  which  follow,  from  within  outward,  are  a 
mass  of  cells  or  fibrils  of  various  structure,  but  their  functions 
are  not  certainly  known.  It  is  agreed,  however,  that  the  true 
end-apparatus  of  vision  is  found  in  the  ninth,  or  layer  next  the 
choroid  coat,  called  the  rod  and  cone  layer,  which  is  composed 
of  "  multitudes  of  elongated  bodies  arranged  side  by  side  like 
rows  of  palisades,  and  vertically  to  the  surfaces  of  the  retina." 
They  are  of  two  kinds,  some  of  them  cylindrical,  and  called 
the  '  rods '  of  the  retina,  and  others  conical  or  flask-shaped, 
and  called  the  '  cones  '  of  the  retina.  The  rods  are  about  -gi^ 
of  an  inch  in  length,  and  the  cones  something  like  half  as  long, 
the  diameters  being  about  y^^o"  °f  an  mcn  f°r  tne  cones  and 
T^IRTO"  f°r  tne  r°ds.  On  the  exterior  of  this  layer  of  rods  and 
cones  lies  the  pigment-epithelium  of  the  choroid,  a  perfect 
mosaic  of  hexagonal  cells,  in  closest  connection  with  it,  sending 
up  pigmented  processes  between  the  rods  and  cones. 

There  is  no  doubt  among  physiologists  that  the  true  nervous 
effect  which  gives  rise  to  vision,  is  due  to  these  rods  and  cones 
of  the  retina ;  and  that  the  vibrations  of  the  luminiferous  ether 
pass  through  the  inner  layers  and  reach  these  end-organs,  where 
the  nervous  process  really  begins. 

The  mechanical  basis  of  vision,  as  indeed  of  all  sensation,  is 
motion ;  but  in  true  case  of  sight  it  is  infinitely  refined  as  com- 
pared with  that  of  hearing  —  the  sense  in  which  vibratory 
motion  is  most  clearly  demonstrable  to  touch  and  sight.  The 
highest  possible  sensation  of  the  ear  corresponds  with  a  num- 
ber of  vibrations  many  million  times  less  than  that  of  the  lowest 
possible  sensations  of  the  eye. 


64  MECHANISM   AND    PERSONALITY. 

The  fact  is,  science  makes  large  demands  upon  our  credulity 
in  the  phenomena  of  light.  In  the  first  place,  it  is  compelled 
to  assume  the  existence  of  a  substance  —  the  luminiferous 
ether,  —  pervading  all  space,  for  the  transmission  of  light  at 
all ;  and  the  characteristics  of  this  substance  which  the  undu- 
latory  theory  of  light  force  upon  it,  are  marvellous  in  the 
extreme.  It  has  to  be  so  subtle  as  to  allow  all  bodies  to  pass 
through  it,  or  itself  to  pass  through  them,  without  the  possi- 
bility of  discovering  that  it  exists  at  all  as  a  resisting  medium, 
and  yet  it  has  to  be  a  solid  of  a  rigidity  immensely  greater  than 
the  hardest  substance  of  the  earth.  It  is  the  vibratory  motion 
of  this  substance  which  by  its  action  on  the  retina  gives  rise  to 
the  sensation  of  light. 

Sir  Isaac  Newton  discovered  that  common  light,  that  is,  white 
light,  as  that  of  the  sun,  is  not  simple  but  composite.  As  every- 
body knows,  a  ray  of  sunlight  passed  through  a  prism  gives 
all  the  colors  of  the  rainbow,  and  this  succession  of  colors 
arranged  as  given  by  a  prism,  forms  what  is  called  the  solar 
spectrum,  with  red  at  one  end  and  violet  at  the  other.  The 
red  end  of  the  spectrum  is  the  lowest  order  of  luminosity,  and 
is  physically  due  to  the  least  rapid  vibratory  motion  of  the 
luminiferous  ether,  or,  which  means  the  same  thing,  that  order 
of  vibrations  which  has  the  greatest  wave  length.  In  dark  red 
light  the  number  of  vibrations  in  a  second  is  392,000,000,000,000 
and  the  wave  length  0.000760  of  a  millimetre.  At  the  other  ex- 
treme end  of  the  spectrum  is  the  violet  with  75  7,000,000,000,000 
per  second  and  having  a  wave  length  0.000397  of  a  millimetre. 
These  limits  give  the  extreme  range  of  the  eye,  and  between 
them  lie  all  the  other  colors. 

The  space  covered  by  the  prismatic  colors  in  the  spectrum 
embraces  those  ethereal  vibrations  which  lie  between  the  limits 
already  given,  but  there  are  less  rapid  vibrations  below  the 
lower  end,  and  more  rapid,  far  abDve  the  upper  end.  Those 
below  produce  the  most  powerful  heat  effects,  and  are  called 


THE    SENSE    OF    VISION.  65 

'heat  rays,'  while  those  above  are  most  active  in  producing 
chemical  effects,  and  are  called  '  actinic  rays.'  That  these 
phenomena  are  all  connected  may  be  readily  made  to  appear. 
If  a  current  of  electricity  be  passed  through  a  platinum  wire 
the  temperature  will  gradually  rise  as  the  intensity  of  the  cur- 
rent is  increased,  until,  at  a  temperature  of  about  540°,  it  will 
begin  to  glow.  The  light  first  emitted  will  be  red ;  then  will 
be  added  yellow,  green,  blue,  and  violet  in  succession.  When 
it  reaches  white  heat  it  emits  all  the  prismatic  colors. 

The  number  of  colors  is  really  infinite,  since  they  grade  into 
each  other  imperceptibly,  but  there  are  three  colors  which  seem 
to  be  fundamentally  different  from  each  other,  and  from  all 
others.  They  are  the  red,  green,  and  violet.  All  other  colors 
are  composite  and  can  be  produced  by  mixing  these  three,  two 
and  two,  in  varying  proportions  ;  but  neither  the  red,  green,  or 
violet  can  be  so  produced.  They  are  therefore  primary,  and  it 
is  thought  that  they  correspond  to  three  specific  activities  of 
the  rods  and  cones  of  the  retina.  They  may  be  regarded  as  the 
three  fundamental  sensations  of  the  eye.  Such  is  the  theory 
of  Dr.  Young,  elaborated  by  Helmholtz.  Homogeneous  or 
monochromatic  light  excites  all  three,  but  with  varying  intensi- 
ties according  to  the  length  of  the  wave.  Long  waves  excite 
most  strongly  the  red,  medium  waves  the  green,  and  the 
shortest,  violet.  The  spectrum  presents  a  succession  of  color- 
bands,  quite  distinct  though  they  grade  into  each  other ;  they 
are  called  the  '  prismatic  colors  '  —  red,  orange,  yellow,  green, 
cyan-blue,  ultramarine-blue,  and  violet.  The  bands  are  not  of 
equal  breadth,  the  blue  being  greatest  in  extent.  If  these  be 
arranged  on  a  circle  with  purple  between  the  violet  and  red, 
and  with  subdivisions  as  indicated  in  the  figure  here  given, 
the  two  colors  lying  at  the  extremities  of  any  diameter  when 
mixed  will  produce  white.  In  any  set  of  such  colors,  either  is 
called  '  complementary  '  of  the  other.  Any  color  lying  on  the 
circumference  between  the  red  and  green  can  be  produced  by 


66 


MECHANISM    AND    PERSONALITY. 


mixing  these  two  in  proper  proportions.  So  also  with  those 
between  green  and  violet.  Purple,  which  is  not  a  prismatic 
color,  is  produced  by  red  and  violet.  All  the  colors  of  the 
spectrum  together,  of  course,  produce  white. 


PURPLE 


N33UO 


Mixing  colors,  however,  is  not  the  same  thing  as  mixing 
pigments,  —  the  results  are  quite  different.  For  example,  if 
chrome-yellow  and  ult-blue  be  mixed,  a  green  is  the  result ;  but 
if  with  the  same  pigment  a  disk  be  painted  something  over  'half 
of  it  blue,  and  the  rest  yellow,  and  then  made  to  revolve,  the 
result  will  be  white  ;  or  rather  an  approximation.  In  this  last 
case  the  mixture  takes  place  in  the  retina  itself,  by  reason  of 
what  is  called  '  persistence  of  retinal  impressions.'  When  the 
retina  is  once  excited  the  impression  lasts  for  a  short  time  — 
from  -  to  -  of  a  second  —  after  the  removal  of  the  stimulus. 


THE    SENSE    OF    VISION.  6/ 

If  one  looks  fixedly  at  a  bright  light  for  a  moment,  and  then 
quickly  closes  the  eye,  one  sees  a  luminous  image  of  the  object, 
—  for  a  short  time  quite  bright,  but  gradually  fading.  Many 
curious  illusions  are  produced  through  this  principle  of  per- 
sistence. 

These  '  accidental '  or  "consecutive  '  images  are  of  two  kinds, 
— '  positive,'  where  the  eye  being  fixed  but  a  short  time,  say, 
^  of  a  second,  the  image  has  its  lights  and  shades  in  the  same 
order  as  in  the  object;  — ' negative,'  where  the  gaze  having 
been  prolonged,  the  image  has  its  bright  parts  where  the  dark 
parts  of  the  object  were,  and  the  reverse.  If  the  gaze  be 
upon,  say,  a  disk  of  yellow  paper  on  a  gray  ground  for  fifteen 
or  twenty  seconds,  and  the  disk  be  suddenly  removed  without 
disturbing  the  eye,  there  will  appear  in  its  place,  a  blue  image, 
that  is,  the  complementary  color  will  appear ;  and  so  with  any 
other  color.  This  is  accounted  for  physiologically  by  the  the- 
ory that  the  retina  becomes  fatigued  by  the  continued  stimula- 
tion, and  upon  the  removal  of  the  stimulus,  the  eye  does  not 
respond  to  the  low  stimulation  of  that  color  in  the  gray,  but 
readily  to  its  complementary  color  which  is  also  there.  It  is 
not  improbable  that  some  chemical  activity  also  enters  the 
problem. 

Colors  have  three  special  characteristics,  '  Tone,'  '  Intensity,' 
and  '  Saturation.'  Tone  depends  upon  the  number  of  vibra- 
tions per  second,  and  we  distinguish  different  color  tones  as  we 
pass  from  the  red  end  to  the  violet  end  of  the  spectrum,  but 
without  marked  lines  of  separation.  Intensity  is  doubtless  due 
to  the  amplitude  of  the  vibrations,  and  in  sensation  means  the 
greater  or  less  brightness.  A  tone  is  said  to  be  '  saturated  '  or 
'  pure '  when  there  is  no  white  light  mixed  with  it.  It  is  diffi- 
cult to  get  perfectly  saturated  tones  except  in  the  spectrum. 
There  are  an  infinite  number  of  '  tints '  or  '  shades '  which 
result  from  mixtures  of  colors. 

The  retina  is  not  all  equally  sensitive.     The  '  yellow  spot '  is 


68  MECHANISM    AND    PERSONALITY. 

altogether  the  most  sensitive,  and  it  is  doubtful  whether  distinct 
vision  is  possible  except  when  the  image  is  made  to  fall  on  this 
spot.  This  is  why  the  eye  is  in  such  constant  motion,  and  an 
extremely  small  movement,  when  the  eye  is  looking  in  the  direc- 
tion of  an  object,  brings  the  image  on  this  spot.  Though  the 
spot  is  so  small  it  corresponds  to  a  visual  angle  of  from  2°  to  4°. 
Its  extreme  sensibility  is  due  no  doubt  to  the  immense  number 
of  cones  —  said  to  be  one  million  in  an  area  not  greater  than 
Y^-Q-  of  a  square  inch. 


CHASM    BETWEEN    MECHANISM    AND    CONSCIOUSNESS.    69 


CHAPTER  VIII. 

CHASM    BETWEEN    MECHANISM    AND    CONSCIOUSNESS. 

Physiological  research  with  respect  to  psycho-mechanisms.  Protoplasm 
not  pure  and  simple  matter.  Professor  Romanes  quoted.  Darwin,  Huxley, 
Tyndall,  and  Spencer  not  materialists.  Hobbes  quoted.  The  problem 
of  relation  between  physiology  and  consciousness.  The  chasm  recognized. 
Leaders  of  science  quoted. 

WE  have  now  before  us  in  outline,  substantially  all  that 
the  latest  physiological  research  can  tell  us  touching 
the  human  mechanism  in  its  relation  to  the  psychic  powers. 
To  one  without  some  philosophical  training,  the  case  might 
well  seem  to  be  closed  and  consciousness  and  thought  accounted 
for.  It  is  not  too  much  to  say,  perhaps,  that  the  majority  of 
those  engaged  in  physical  research  are  quite  satisfied  that  mat- 
ter is  the  cause  of  mind ;  and  it  is  to  be  feared  that  immense 
numbers  of  people  are  quietly  acquiescing  in  this  unscientific 
science.  It  is  unscientific  because  science  itself,  by  the  voice 
of  its  chosen  leaders,  declares  it  to  be  so. 

But  before  we  hear  the  physicists  speak,  let  us  look  at  the 
question  a  moment  for  ourselves  in  the  light  of  common  sense. 
In  the  first  place  the  whole  physiological  structure  is  built  up 
out  of  protoplasm  ;  but  protoplasm  is  not  pure  and  simple 
matter.  It  is  vitalized  matter,  and  so  vastly  different  from  dead 
or  inert  matter.  This  life-factor  cannot  be  produced  from  dead 
matter,  so  far  as  known,  notwithstanding  persistent  efforts  to 
that  end.  The  question  of  '  spontaneous  generation  '  may  be 
considered  as  set  at  rest,  since  all  efforts  to  evolve  life  from 
dead  matter  have  failed ;  and  the  scientific  world  has  substan- 


70  MECHANISM    AND    PERSONALITY. 

tially  given  it  up.  Since  it  is  impossible  to  prove  a  negation 
by  experiment,  this  question  can  never  be  settled  beyond  con- 
tradiction ;  but  we  are  bound  to  take  the  fact  as  it  stands,  and 
recognize  in  protoplasm  that  very  something,  vitality,  which  is 
not  a  necessary  factor  of  matter.  This  non-material  factor 
confessedly  gives  to  matter  the  potentialities  through  which 
organization  and  co-ordination  are  accomplished  in  all  animate 
structures  ;  and  it  is  through  this  factor  that  that  one  indis- 
putable fact  of  the  universe  which  we  call '  personality '  is  made 
conceivable.  It  is  thus  absolutely  necessary  for  the  physicist 
to  start  with  matter  plus  the  one  fact  through  which  explana- 
tion becomes  possible,  or  through  which  anything  ever  obtains 
which  needs  explanation.  This  the  leaders  of  scientific  thought 
clearly  see,  and  have  explicitly  stated,  as  will  abundantly  ap- 
pear ;  but  the  metaphysical  and  theological  world,  as  well  as 
most  of  the  popular- science  luminaries,  are  either  in  ignorance 
of  the  fact,  or  regard  it  as  of  no  importance ;  and  hence  a 
needless  alarm  on  the  one  hand,  and  a  scornful  satisfaction  on 
the  other. 

Or,  again,  let  us  go  back  to  the  ultimate  basis  of  certitude, 
which  we  found  in  the  beginning  to  be  the  conscious  ego  —  the 
self — the  source  and  centre  of  all  knowing.  We  saw  that  we 
could  doubt  of  all  things  whatever,  protoplasm,  the  whole  ner- 
vous system,  motion,  the  brain  and  all  its  functions,  but  the 
thinker  cannot  doubt  that  he  thinks,  —  he  cannot  doubt  that 
he  thinks  he  has,  or  is,  a  personality.  Protoplasm,  or  matter, 
or  whatever  else  there  may  be,  then,  has  no  better  warrant  than 
thought  for  the  conviction,  that  it  is  what  it  is,  or,  is  at  all. 

Let  me  use  once  more  the  words  of  Professor  Romanes  : 
"  All  our  knowledge  of  motion,  and  so  of  matter,  is  merely  a 
knowledge  of  the  modification  of  mind.  That  is  to  say,  all  our 
knowledge  of  the  external  world,  including  the  knowledge  of 
our  own  brains,  is  merely  a  knowledge  of  our  own  mental 
states.  Let  it  be  observed  that  we  do  not  even  require  to  go 


CHASM    BETWEEN    MECHANISM    AND    CONSCIOUSNESS.    J\ 

as  far  as  the  irrefutable  position  of  Berkeley,  that  the  existence 
of  an  external  world  without  the  medium  of  mind,  or  of  being 
without  knowing,  is  inconceivable.  It  is  enough  to  take  our 
stand  on  a  lower  level  of  abstraction,  and  to  say  that  whether 
or  not  an  external  world  can  exist  in  any  absolute  or  conceiv- 
able sense,  at  any  rate  it  cannot  do  so  for  us.  We  cannot  think 
any  of  the  facts  of  external  nature  without  presupposing  the  ex- 
istence of  a  mind  which  thinks  them ;  and  therefore,  so  far  at 
least  as  we  are  concerned,  mind  is  of  necessity  prior  to  any- 
thing else.  It  is  for  us  the  only  mode  of  existence  which  is  real 
in  its  own  right ;  and  to  it,  as  a  standard,  all  other  modes  of 
existence  which  may  be  zVzferred  must  be  referred.  Therefore,  if 
we  say  that  mind  is  a  function  of  motion,  we  only  say  in  a  some- 
what confused  terminology,  that  mind  is  a  function  of  itself." 

Philosophy  has  always  had  to  grapple  with  this  problem  of 
the  possible  nexus  between  mind  and  matter.  Not  to  go  back 
beyond  Descartes,  a  number  of  theories  have  been  proposed 
to  solve  the  difficulty,  all,  now,  rather  curious  than  useful,  but 
we  shall  leave  them  on  one  side  for  the  present.  The  only 
theory  which  concerns  us  here  is  that  of  pure  materialism,  but 
that  is  hardly  worth  consideration,  since  it  is  doubtful  whether 
there  be  any  materialists,  in  the  proper  sense,  anywhere.  It  is 
certain  that  Darwin  was  not,  and  that  Huxley,  Tyndall,  Spencer, 
and  all  that  school  who  understand  their  leaders  are  not,  how- 
ever unduly  they  may  emphasize  the  mere  physical  side.  One 
cannot  be  a  materialist,  —  one,  that  is,  who  is  sufficiently 
acquainted  with  the  subject  to  be  entitled  to  an  opinion,  since 
we  do  not  even  know  that  there  is  any  such  thing  as  matter, 
except  through  the  necessary  postulate  that  mind  is  :  and  we 
cannot  conclude  that  mind  is  but  the  product  of  matter,  since 
the  effect  to  be  accounted  for,  in  such  case,  is  necessarily  the 
factor  through  which  this,  or  any  other  cause  is  demanded. 
Professor  Romanes  puts  this  strongly  : 

" '  Motion,'  says  Hobbes,  '  produceth  nothing  but  motion  ' ; 


72  MECHANISM    AND    PERSONALITY. 

and  yet  he  immediately  proceeds  to  assume  that  in  the  case  of 
the  brain,  it  produces  not  only  motion,  but  mind.  He  was 
perfectly  right  in  saying  that,  with  respect  to  its  movements, 
the  animal  body  resembles  an  engine  or  a  watch ;  and  if  he 
had  been  acquainted  with  higher  evolution  in  watch-making, 
he  might  with  full  propriety  have  argued,  for  instance,  that  in 
the  compensation  balance,  whereby  a  watch  adjusts  its  own 
movements  in  adaptation  to  external  changes  of  temperature, 
the  watch  is  exhibiting  the  mechanical  aspect  of  volition. 
And,  similarly,  it  is  perhaps  possible  to  conceive  that  the  prin- 
ciples of  mechanism  might  be  more  and  more  extended  in  their 
effects,  until,  in  so  marvellously  perfect  a  structure  as  the  human 
brain,  all  the  voluntary  movements  of  the  body  might  be  origi- 
nated in  the  same  mechanical  manner  as  the  compensating 
movements  of  a  watch  ;  for  this,  indeed,  as  we  have  seen,  is 
no  more  than  happens  in  all  the  nerve-centres  other  than  the 
cerebral  hemispheres.  If  this  were  so,  motion  would  be  produc- 
ing nothing  but  motion,  and  upon  the  subject  of  brain-action 
there  would  be  nothing  further  to  say.  Without  consciousness 
I  should  be  delivering  this  lecture  ;  without  consciousness  you 
would  be  hearing  it ;  and  all  the  busy  brains  in  this  University 
would  be  conducting  their  researches,  or  preparing  for  their 
examinations,  mindlessly.  Strange  as  such  a  state  of  things 
might  be,  still  motion  would  be  producing  nothing  but  motion ; 
and,  therefore,  if  there  were  any  mind  to  contemplate  the  facts, 
it  would  encounter  no  philosophical  paradox  :  it  would  merely 
have  to  conclude  that  such  were  the  astonishing  possibilities  of 
mechanism.  But,  as  the  facts  actually  stand,  we  find  that  this 
is  not  the  case.  We  find,  indeed,  that  up  to  a  certain  level  of 
complexity  mechanism  alone  is  able  to  perform  all  the  compen- 
sations of  adjustment  which  are  performed  by  the  animal  body  ; 
but  we  also  find,  that  beyond  this  level  such  compensations  or 
adjustments  are  never  performed  without  the  intervention  of 
consciousness.  Therefore  the  theory  of  automatism  has  to 


CHASM    BETWEEN    MECHANISM    AND    CONSCIOUSNESS.    73 

meet  the  unanswerable  question  —  How  is  it  that  in  the  ma- 
chinery of  the  brain  motion  produces  this  something  which  is 
not  motion  ?  Science  has  now  definitely  proved  the  correlation 
of  all  the  forces  :  and  this  means  that  if  any  kind  of  motion 
could  produce  anything  else  that  is  not  motion,  it  would  be 
producing  that  which  science  would  be  bound  to  regard  as  in 
the  strictest  sense  of  the  word  a  miracle.  Therefore,  if  we  are 
to  take  our  stand  upon  science,  and  this  is  what  materialism 
professes  to  do,  —  we  are  logically  bound  to  conclude,  not 
merely  that  the  evidence  of  causation  from  body  to  mind  is 
not  so  cogent  as  that  of  causation  in  any  other  case,  but  that 
in  this  particular  case  causation  may  be  proved  again  in  the 
strictest  sense  of  the  term  a  physical  impossibility." 

Professor  M'Kendrick,  University  of  Glasgow,  says  :  "  No 
one  doubts  that  consciousness  has  an  anatomical  substratum, 
but  the  great  problem  of  the  relation  between  the  two  is  as  far 
from  solution  as  in  the  days  when  little  or  nothing  was  known 
of  the  physiology  of  the  nervous  system.  Consciousness  has 
been  driven  step  by  step  upwards  until  now  it  takes  refuge  in 
a  few  thousand  nerve-cells  in  a  portion  of  the  gray  matter  of 
the  cortex  of  the  brain.  The  ancients  believed  that  the  body 
participated  in  the  feelings  of  the  mind,  and  that,  in  a  real 
sense,  the  heart  might  be  torn  by  contending  emotions.  As 
science  advanced,  consciousness  took  refuge  in  the  brain,  first 
in  the  medulla,  and  lastly  in  the  cortex.  But  even  supposing 
that  we  are  ultimately  able  to  understand  all  the  phenomena  — 
chemical,  physical,  and  psychological,  of  this  intricate  ganglionic 
mechanism,  we  shall  be  no  nearer  a  solution  of  the  problem  of 
the  connection  between  the  objective  and  subjective  aspects 
of  the  phenomena.  It  is  no  solution  to  resolve  a  statement  of 
the  phenomena  into  mental  terms  or  expressions,  and  to  be 
content  with  pure  idealism ;  nor  is  it  any  better  to  resolve  all 
the  phenomena  of  mind  into  terms  describing  physical  condi- 
tions, as  in  pure  materialism.  A  philosophy  which  recognizes 


74  MECHANISM    AND    PERSONALITY. 

both  sets  of  phenomena,  mutually  adjusted  and  ever  interlacing, 
may  be  no  explanation;  but  at  all  events  it  is  unpretentious, 
recognizes  the  facts,  and  does  not  delude  the  mind  by  offering 
a  solution  which  is  no  solution  at  all." 

As  we  have  said,  this  point  is  so  clearly  seen  by  all  schools 
of  thought,  that  it  can  hardly  be  said  that  there  are  any  materi- 
alists in  the  proper  sense  of  the  word  at  the  present  time. 

This  is  a  matter  of  such  moment,  that  it  will  be  well  to  sub- 
stantiate the  statement  by  quotations  at  some  length  from  a 
few  of  the  most  distinguished  leaders  of  scientific  thought; 
and  we  begin  with  Dr.  Tyndall. 

He  says,  in  his  lecture  on  "  Matter  and  Force  "  :  "  While  I 
as  a  man  of  science  feel  a  natural  pride  in  scientific  achieve- 
ments, while  I  regard  science  as  the  most  powerful  instrument 
of  intellectual  culture,  as  well  as  the  most  powerful  ministrant 
to  the  material  wants  of  men ;  if  you  ask  me  whether  science 
has  solved,  or  is  likely  in  our  day  to  solve,  the  problem  of  this 
universe,  I  must  shake  my  head  in  doubt.  ...  As  far  as  I  can 
see,  there  is  no  quality  in  the  human  intellect  which  is  fit  to  be 
applied  to  the  solution  of  the  problem.  It  entirely  transcends 
us.  The  mind  of  man  may  be  compared  to  a  musical  instru- 
ment with  a  certain  range  of  notes,  beyond  which  in  both 
directions  we  have  an  infinitude  of  silence.  The  phenomena 
of  matter  and  force  lie  within  our  intellectual  range,  and  as  far 
as  they  reach  we  will  at  all  hazards  push  our  inquiries.  But 
behind,  and  above,  and  around  all,  the  real  mystery  of  this 
universe  lies  unsolved,  and  as  far  as  we  are  concerned  is 
incapable  of  solution." 

In  his  lecture  on  the  "  Scope  and  Limits  of  Scientific  Materi- 
alism," he  is,  if  possible,  even  more  pronounced.  He  says : 
"  I  am  not  mincing  matters,  but  avowing  nakedly  what  many 
scientific  thinkers  more  or  less  distinctly  believe.  The  forma- 
tion of  a  crystal,  a  plant,  or  an  animal  is  in  their  eyes  a  purely 
mechanical  problem,  which  differs  from  the  problems  of  ordi- 


CHASM    BETWEEN    MECHANISM    AND    CONSCIOUSNESS.    75 

nary  mechanism  in  the  smallness  of  the  masses  and  the  com- 
plexity of  the  processes  involved.  Here  you  have  one  half  of 
our  dual  truth ;  let  us  now  glance  at  the  other  half.  Associated 
with  this  wonderful  mechanism  of  the  animal  body  we  have 
phenomena  no  less  certain  than  those  of  physics,  but  between 
which  and  the  mechanism  we  discern  no  necessary  connection. 
A  man,  for  example,  can  say,  I  feel,  I  think,  I  love;  but  how 
does  consciousness  infuse  itself  into  the  problem  ?  The  human 
brain  is  said  to  be  the  organ  of  thought  and  feeling ;  when  we 
are  hurt  the  brain  feels  it,  when  we  ponder  it  is  the  brain  that 
thinks,  when  our  passions  or  affections  are  excited  it  is  through 
the  instrumentality  of  the  brain.  .  .  . 

"  The  relation  of  physics  to  consciousness  being  thus  invari- 
able, it  follows  that,  given  the  state  of  the  brain,  the  corre- 
sponding thought  or  feeling  might  be  inferred ;  or  given  the 
thought  or  feeling,  the  corresponding  state  of  the  brain  might 
be  inferred.  But  how  inferred  ?  It  would  be  at  bottom  not  a 
case  of  logical  inference  at  all,  but  of  empirical  association. 
You  may  reply  that  many  of  the  inferences  of  science  are  of 
this  character ;  the  inference,  for  example,  that  an  electric  cur- 
rent of  a  given  direction  will  deflect  a  magnetic  needle  in  a 
definite  way ;  but  the  case  differs  in  this,  that  the  passage  from 
the  current  to  the  needle,  if  not  demonstrable,  is  thinkable, 
and  that  we  entertain  no  doubt  as  to  the  final  mechanical  solu- 
tion of  the  problem.  But  the  passage  from  the  physics  of  the 
brain  to  the  corresponding  facts  of  consciousness  is  unthink- 
able. Granted  that  a  definite  thought,  and  a  definite  molecular 
action  in  the  brain,  occur  simultaneously ;  we  do  not  possess 
the  intellectual  organ,  nor  apparently  any  rudiment  of  the  organ, 
which  would  enable  us  to  pass,  by  a  process  of  reasoning,  from 
the  one  to  the  other.  They  appear  together,  but  we  do  not 
know  why.  Were  our  minds  and  senses  so  expanded,  strength- 
ened, and  illuminated  as  to  enable  us  to  see  and  feel  the  very 
molecules  of  the  brain ;  were  we  capable  of  following  all  their 


76  MECHANISM    AND    PERSONALITY. 

motions,  all  the  groupings,  all  the  electric  discharges,  if  such 
there  be ;  and  were  we  intimately  acquainted  with  the  corre- 
sponding states  of  thought  and  feeling,  we  should  be  as  far  as 
ever  from  the  solution  of  the  problem,  '  How  are  these  physical 
processes  connected  with  the  facts  of  consciousness  ? '  The 
chasm  between  the  two  classes  of  phenomena  would  still  remain 
intellectually  impassable.  Let  the  consciousness  of  '  love,1  for 
example,  be  associated  with  a  right-handed  spiral  motion  of 
the  molecules  of  the  brain,  and  the  consciousness  of  hate  a 
left-handed  spiral  motion.  We  should  then  know  when  we 
love  that  the  motion  is  in  one  direction,  and  when  we  hate  that 
the  motion  is  in  the  other  ;  but  the  '  why  ? '  would  remain  as 
unanswerable  as  before. 

"In  affirming  that  the  growth  of  the  body  is  mechanical, 
and  that  thought  as  exercised  by  us,  has  its  correlation  in  the 
physics  of  the  brain,  I  think  the  position  of  the  '  materialist '  is 
stated,  as  far  as  that  position  is  a  tenable  one.  I  think  the 
materialist  will  be  able  finally  to  maintain  this  position  against 
all  attacks ;  but  I  do  not  think,  in  the  present  condition  of  the 
human  mind,  that  he  can  pass  beyond  this  position.  I  do  not 
think  he  is  entitled  to  say  that  his  molecular  groupings  and  his 
molecular  motions  explain  everything.  In  reality  they  explain 
nothing.  The  utmost  he  can  affirm  is  the  association  of  two 
classes  of  phenomena,  of  whose  real  bond  of  union  he  is  in 
absolute  ignorance.  The  problem  of  the  connection  of  body 
and  soul  is  as  insoluble  in  its  modern  form  as  it  was  in  the 
pre-scientific  ages." 

Professor  Tyndall  goes  even  further  than  this  :  in  the  October 
number  of  the  Contemporary  Review,  1872,  he  says  :  "  It  is  no 
departure  from  scientific  method  to  place  behind  natural  phe- 
nomena a  Universal  Father,  who,  in  answer  to  the  prayers  of 
his  children,  changes  the  currents  of  phenomena.  Thus  far 
theology  and  science  go  hand  in  hand." 

Again,  at  Manchester  he  declares  :  "  I  have,  not  sometimes 


CHASM    BETWEEN    MECHANISM    AND    CONSCIOUSNESS.    ?/ 

but  often,  in  the  springtime  .  .  .  observed  the  general  joy  of 
opening  life  in  nature,  and  I  have  asked  myself  the  question, 
Can  it  be  that  there  is  no  being  in  nature  that  knows  more 
about  these  things  than  I  do  ?  Do  I,  in  my  ignorance,  repre- 
sent the  highest  knowledge  of  these  things  existing  in  the 
Universe  ?  Ladies  and  Gentlemen,  the  man  that  puts  that  ques- 
tion fairly  to  himself,  if  he  be  not  a  shallow  man,  if  he  be  a 
man  capable  of  being  penetrated  by  profound  thought,  will 
never  answer  the  question  by  professing  that  creed  of  Atheism 
which  has  been  so  lightly  attributed  to  me." 

Professor  Huxley  is  not  in  the  least  behind  Professor  Tyn- 
dall  in  the  clearness  with  which  he  sees  the  limits  of  mechanical 
action,  nor  less  pronounced  in  declarations.  He  says,  in  his 
"  Lay- Sermon  "  on  "  The  Educational  Value  of  the  Natural 
History  Sciences'^  "What  is  the  cause  of  this  wonderful  dif- 
ference between  the  dead  particle  and  the  living  particle  of 
matter  appearing  in  other  respects  identical?  That  difference 
to  which  we  give  the  name  of  Life  ?  I,  for  one,  cannot  tell 
you.  It  may  be  that,  by  and  by,  philosophers  will  discover 
some  higher  laws  of  which  the  facts  of  life  are  particular  cases 
—  very  possibly  they  will  find  out  some  bond  between  physico- 
chemical  phenomena  on  the  one  hand,  and  vital  phenomena 
on  the  other.  At  present,  however,  we  assuredly  know  of 
none  ;  and  I  think  we  shall  exercise  a  wise  humility  in  con- 
fessing that,  for  us  at  least,  this  successive  assumption  of 
different  states —  (external  conditions  remaining  the  same) — 
this  spontaneity  of  action  —  if  I  may  use  a  term  which  implies 
more  than  I  would  be  answerable  for  —  which  constitutes  so 
vast  and  plain  a  practical  distinction  between  living  bodies  and 
those  which  do  not  live,  is  an  ultimate  fact ;  indicating  as  such, 
the  existence  of  a  broad  line  of  demarcation  between  the 
subject-matter  of  Biological,  and  that  of  all  other  sciences." 

In  his  address  on  the  "  Physical  Basis  of  Life,"  he  says : 
"  Past  experience  leads  me  to  be  tolerably  certain  that,  when 


78  MECHANISM    AND    PERSONALITY. 

the  propositions  I  have  just  placed  before  you  are  accessible 
to  public  comment  and  criticism,  they  will  be  condemned  by 
many  zealous  persons,  and  perhaps  by  some  few  of  the  wise 
and  thoughtful.  I  should  not  wonder  if  'gross  and  brutal 
materialism '  were  the  mildest  phrase  applied  to  them  in  cer- 
tain quarters.  And,  most  undoubtedly,  the  terms  of  the  prop- 
ositions are  distinctly  materialistic.  Nevertheless  two  things 
are  certain;  the  one,  that  I  hold  the  statements  to  be  sub- 
stantially true ;  the  other,  that  I,  individually,  am  no  material- 
ist, but  on  the  contrary,  believe  materialism  to  involve  grave 
philosophical  errors.  This  union  of  materialistic  terminology 
with  the  repudiation  of  materialistic  philosophy,  I  share  with 
some  of  the  most  thoughtful  men  with  whom  I  am  ac- 
quainted." 

Again  he  says :  "  All  who  are  competent  to  express  an 
opinion  on  the  subject  are  at  present  agreed  that  the  manifold 
varieties  of  animal  and  vegetable  life  have  not  either  come 
into  existence  by  chance,  nor  result  from  capricious  exertions 
of  creative  power,  but  that  they  have  taken  place  in  a  definite 
order,  the  statement  of  which  order  is  what  men  of  science 
term  natural  law." 

But  he  reaches  the  highest  possible  pitch  in  the  following 
energetic  expression :  "  How  it  is  that  anything  so  remark- 
able as  a  state  of  consciousness  comes  about  as  the  result  of 
irritating  nervous  tissue,  is  just  as  unaccountable  as  the  appear- 
ance of  the  Djinn  when  Aladdin  rubbed  his  lamp." 

The  following  assertion  which  he  makes  in  speaking  of 
'  Matter  and  Force  '  is  all  that  metaphysic  can  demand  :  "  It 
is  an  indisputable  truth  that  what  we  call  the  material  world  is 
only  known  to  us  under  the  forms  of  the  ideal  world." 

He  says  again,  speaking  of  physics  and  metaphysics  :  "  Their 
differences  are  complementary,  not  antagonistic,  and  thought 
will  never  be  completely  fruitful  until  the  one  unites  with  the 
other." 


CHASM    BETWEEN    MECHANISM    AND    CONSCIOUSNESS.    79 

Herbert  Spencer  is  equally  definite  in  his  statements.  He 
says  in  the  Nineteenth  Century  of  January,  1884:  "Those 
who  think  that  science  is  dissipating  religious  beliefs  and  sen- 
timents seem  unaware  that  whatever  of  mystery  is  taken  from 
the  old  interpretation  is  added  to  the  new.  Or  rather,  we  may 
say,  that  transference  from  one  to  the  other  is  accompanied  by 
increase,  since  for  an  explanation  which  has  a  seeming  feasi- 
bility, science  substitutes  an  explanation  which,  carrying  us 
back  only  a  certain  distance,  there  leaves  us  in  the  presence 
of  the  avowedly  inexplicable.  .  .  .  But  amid  the  mysteries 
which  become  the  more  mysterious  the  more  they  are  thought 
about,  there  will  remain  the  one  absolute  certainty  that  he  is  ever 
in  the  presence  of  an  Infinite  and  Eternal  energy."  To  this 
Infinite  and  Eternal  energy  from  which  "  all  things  proceed," 
he  only  hesitates  to  apply  the  word  '  Person,'  because  "  though 
the  attributes  of  personality,  as  we  know  it,  cannot  be  con- 
ceived by  us  as  attributes  of  the  Unknown  Cause  of  things,  yet 
duty  requires  us  neither  to  affirm  nor  deny  personality ;  but 
the  choice  is  not  between  personality  and  something  lower, 
but  between  personality  and  something  higher,  and  the  ulti- 
mate power  is  no  more  representable  in  terms  of  human  con- 
sciousness than  human  consciousness  is  representable  in  terms 
of  plant  functions."  He  says  further :  "  I  held  at  the  outset, 
and  continue  to  hold  that  the  Inscrutable  Existence,  which 
science  in  the  last  resort  is  compelled  to  recognize  as  unreached 
by  its  deepest  analysis  of  matter,  motion,  thought,  and  feeling, 
stands  towards  our  general  conception  of  things  in  substan- 
tially the  same  relation  as  does  the  Creative  Power  asserted  by 
Theology." 

Darwin  bears  testimony  to  the  same  necessity  of  postulating 
an  ultimate  Power  which  is  not  'blind.'  He  says  in  the 
"Descent  of  Man"  :  "I  am  aware  that  the  conclusions  arrived 
at  in  this  work  will  be  denounced  by  some  as  highly  irreligious  ; 
but  he  who  thus  denounces  them  is  bound  to  show  why  it  is 


80  MECHANISM    AND    PERSONALITY. 

more  irreligious  to  explain  the  origin  of  man,  as  a  distinct 
species,  by  descent  from  some  lower  form,  through  the  laws  of 
variation  and  natural  selection,  than  to  explain  the  birth  of  the 
individual  through  the  laws  of  ordinary  reproduction.  The 
birth  of  the  species  and  of  the  individual  are  equally  parts  of 
that  grand  sequence  of  events  which  our  minds  refuse  to  accept 
as  the  result  of  blind  chance." 

Dr.  Maudsley,  in  that  direful,  pessimistic  book,  "  Body  and 
Will,"  speaks  upon  this  point  as  follows :  "  Is  there  any  good 
reason  why  the  doctrine  of  evolution  and  the  doctrine  of 
epigenesis  should  be  opposed  to  one  another  as  irreconcilable 
doctrines  ?  More  correctly  perhaps  epigenesis  is  an  event  of 
evolution,  and  evolution  impossible  without  epigenesis ;  for 
evolution,  strictly  speaking,  is  the  unfolding  of  that  which  lies 
as  a  pre-formation  in  germ,  which  a  new  product  with  new 
properties  manifestly  does  not,  any  more  than  the  differential 
calculus  lies  in  a  primeval  atom ;  while  epigenesis  signifies  a 
state  which  is  the  basis  of,  and  the  causative  impulse  to,  a  new 
and  more  complex  state.  There  is  a  leap  ;  and  it  is  not  good 
philosophy  to  blindfold  ourselves  with  a  big  word  when  taking 
the  leap,  as  some  evolutionists  will  have  us  do,  and  then  protest 
that  we  have  not  taken  it." 

The  great  German  physiologist,  Du  Bois  Reymond,  is  just 
as  pronounced  as  any  of  these  distinguished  Englishmen.  He 
says,  "  If  we  had  an  absolutely  perfect  knowledge  of  the  body, 
including  the  brain  and  all  the  changes  in  it,  the  psychical  state 
called  sensation  would  be  as  incomprehensible  as  ever.  For 
the  very  highest  knowledge  we  could  get  would  reveal  only 
matter  in  motion,  and  the  connection  between  any  motions  of 
any  atoms  in  my  brain  and  such  unique  undeniable  facts  as 
that  I  feel  pain,  smell  a  rose,  or  see  red  is  thoroughly  incom- 
prehensible." 

M.  Pasteur,  upon  taking  his  place  in  the  French  Academy 
must  have  astonished  that  body  of  savants  as  he  uttered  the 


CHASM    BETWEEN    MECHANISM    AND    CONSCIOUSNESS.    8l 

following  :  "  Beyond  the  starry  vault  above  us,  what  is  there  ? 
Other  starry  skies.  Well  and  beyond  those?  The  human 
mind,  swayed  by  an  invincible  impulse,  will  never  cease  to 
inquire  what  there  is  beyond  :  and  there  is  no  point  in  time 
and  space  which  can  set  at  rest  the  implacable  question.  It 
is  no  use  to  reply  that  beyond  any  given  point  there  is  bound- 
less space,  time,  or  magnitude.  Such  words  convey  no  tangible 
meaning  to  the  human  mind.  The  man  who  proclaims  the 
existence  of  the  Infinite  (and  there  is  no  man  who  does  not) 
accumulates  in  that  bare  statement  more  supernatural  elements 
than  are  to  be  found  in  the  miracles  of  all  religions ;  for  the 
notion  of  the  Infinite  has  this  double  character — that  it  is 
at  once  self-evident  —  that  it  forces  itself  upon  the  mind,  and 
yet  is*  incomprehensible.  .  .  .  This  positive  and  primordial 
notion  with  all  its  consequences  in  the  life  of  societies,  posi- 
tivism sets  at  naught.  The  Greeks  understood  the  power  of 
the  unseen  world.  They  have  left  us  the  noblest  word  in  our 
language  'enthusiasm,'  cv  Ocos  —  an  inner  God.  The  great- 
ness of  human  deeds  can  be  measured  by  the  inspiration  that 
gives  them  birth.  Happy  the  man  who  has  an  inner  God,  — 
an  ideal  of  beauty,  —  and  who  obeys  his  behests.  The  ideal 
of  art,  the  ideal  of  science,  the  ideal  of  country,  the  ideal  of  the 
verities  of  the  Gospel  —  those  are  the  living  sources  of  great 
ideas  and  noble  deeds  —  they  are  illuminated  by  a  gleam  from 
the  Infinite." 

Like  quotations  could  be  accumulated  from  any  number  of 
eminent  physiologists,  as  well  in  America  as  in  Europe,  but 
there  is  no  need.  It  can  hardly  be  disputed  that  science  does 
not  countenance  a  pure,  bald  atheistic  materialism,  but  on  the 
contrary  maintains  an  ultimate  power  behind  all  physical 
phenomena. 


82  MECHANISM    AND    PERSONALITY. 


CHAPTER   IX. 

PERSONALITY   IN   ITS   PSYCHICAL   ASPECT. 

Analysis  of  the  psychical  factor  of  personality.  Three  fundamental  modes 
of  the  self —  sensation,  cognition,  and  conation.  A  tri-unity,  inseparable 
but  logically  distinguishable.  Sub-consciousness.  Unity  and  plurality. 

THE  testimony,  as  we  have  seen,  of  the  leaders  of  science 
to  the  existence  of  a  chasm  in  thought,  between  all  pos- 
sible mechanisms,  and  that  ineffable  somewhat  which  we  know 
at  first  hand,  and  name  Personality,  is  as  unqualified  as  the 
most  rigid  metaphysician  or  theologian  could  ask.  Let  us  now 
consider  what  is  involved  in  personality  as  we  know  it  in 
consciousness. 

Take  any,  —  the  simplest  act  of  experience.  I  look  at  my 
watch  and  note  the  hour.  A  little  reflection  will  reveal  to  us 
three  several  modes,  or  psychical  phases  of  the  conscious  per- 
sonality in  this  simple  event.  First,  the  figures  and  hands  on 
the  face  of  the  watch  act  as  stimuli  to  the  organ  of  sight  and 
produce  in  me,  somehow,  the  sensation  of  an  object  without, 
variously  marked  :  second,  I  take  note  of  the  relative  positions 
of  the  hands  with  respect  to  the  figures,  and  understand  the 
hour  indicated  :  and  third,  I  am  conscious  of  effort  or  atten- 
tion throughout  the  whole  event.  These  three  facts  of  the 
conscious  personality  are  called,  respectively, '  sensibility,'  '  cog- 
nition,' and  '  conation,'  —  which,  in  a  general  way,  answer  to 
what  are  commonly  known  as  feeling,  thought,  and  will. 

The  one  element  common  to  all  three  of  these  fundamental 
modes  of  the  self  is  consciousness,  which  may  be  called  the 
daylight  of  personality.  It  does  not  itself  see,  —  it  does  not 


PERSONALITY    IN    ITS    PSYCHICAL    ASPECT.  83 

itself  feel,  modify  or  arrange,  but  it  lights  up  the  psychical 
world,  and  thus  is  the  occasion  and  not  the  cause  of  all  these. 

While  we  must  clearly  distinguish  the  three  elementary 
modes  of  the  self  from  each  other,  they  cannot  be  made  to 
stand  apart  as  numerically  separate,  and  so  are  not  three  totally 
different  kinds  of  knowledge.  Neither  can  they  be  confused, 
or  made  to  pass  one  into  the  other.  Each,  while  not  being 
either  of  the  other  two,  nor  in  any  conceivable  way  like  either 
of  them,  presupposes  both ;  and  there  can  never  be  any,  the 
simplest  act  of  illuminated  or  conscious  knowledge  in  which 
all  three  are  not  found  as  constituent  factors.  These  are  sim- 
ply facts  of  our  psychical  nature  which  must  be  admitted  by 
all  who  understand  the  force  of  the  terms  in  which  they  are 
enunciated. 

We  have  already  seen  something  of  what  is  known,  since 
Herbart,  as  the  '  threshold  value  '  of  sensation  ;  that  is,  of  the 
intensity  which  sensation  must  reach  before  it,  so  to  speak, 
flows  over  the  threshold  of  consciousness  and  becomes  dis- 
tinguishable in  the  self.  It  is  well  established  that  there  are 
abundant  sensations,  or  grades  of  stimulation  of  the  sense- 
organs  which  are  not  and  cannot  be  reached  by  the  illumi- 
nating power  of  consciousness,  and  yet  largely  affect  the  per- 
sonality. These  all  lie  in  the  region  which  has  been  happily 
called  sub-consciousness.  In  the  nature  of  the  case  it  is  a 
region,  not  of  knowledge,  but  of  personal  activities  which  make 
it  possible  for  the  higher,  conscious  activities  to  exist.  We 
may  pass  it  by,  however,  for  the  present,  since  we  are  consider- 
ing only  what  we  know  in  consciousness. 

To  resume  :  let  us  try  to  see  how  each  of  the  three  primary 
modes  of  the  conscious  self  presupposes  the  other  two.  The 
result  of  a  stimulus  cannot  be  a  sensation  in  consciousness 
unless  it  be  known,  and  it  cannot  be  known  unless  it  come 
within  the  sphere  of  attention.  But  to  know  is  to  understand 
or  think,  and  to  attend  is  to  conate  or  energize,  —  actively 


84  MECHANISM    AND    PERSONALITY. 

that  is,  or  with  purpose,  or  passively,  that  is,  in  response  to 
solicitation.  Any — the  simplest  effort,  must  fall  within  the 
general  domain  of  the  will. 

But  even  after  we  rise  into  the  clearly  marked  region  of  the 
purposive  will,  we  see  that  external  stimuli,  and  the  reactions 
of  the  physical  factor,  do  not  necessarily  result  in  differentiated 
sensation,  though  far  above  the  threshold  value.  The  greater 
part  of  what  goes  on  about  us  is  quite  lost  to  consciousness  be- 
cause we  do  not  attend.  When  occupied  we  do  not  hear  the 
ticking  of  the  clock.  The  miller  is  not  conscious  of  the  whir 
and  jar  of  his  machinery,  and  the  mother  is  too  often  wholly 
oblivious  to  the  din  and  riot  of  her  progeny.  One  may  be 
seriously  hurt  and  know  nothing  about  it.  Soldiers  wounded 
in  action  often  get  the  first  intimation  of  it  from  their  com- 
rades. Rapt  attention,  intense  interest,  passion  or  fear  con- 
stantly renders  one  unconscious  of  what  is  going  on  about  one 
when  out  of  the  focus  of  attention. 

That  there  could  be  no  thought  without  sensation  is  suffi- 
ciently obvious.  The  self  in  a  state  of  absolute  isolation  from 
the  beginning,  —  if  such  a  thing  is  conceivable,  —  could  have 
no  material  of  thought  and  would  remain  forever  without 
knowledge  of  any  sort. 

So  with  the  will.  No  purposive  nor  passive  activity  of  the 
conative  power  is  possible  without  sensibility  and  cognition. 

And  yet,  on  the  other  hand,  no  one  of  these  three  modes 
can  be  in  any  wise  construed  in  terms  of  either  of  the  others. 
Feeling  has  a  purely  subjective  quality,  i.e.  its  content  is 
wholly  a  state  or  condition  of  the  self,  not  known  or  knowable 
to  another  personality ;  while  thought  is  in  some  sort  objective, 
discovering  relations  which  would  appear  equally  to  any  intel- 
ligence in  possession  of  the  facts.  Feeling  is  individual ; 
thought  is  universal.  The  content  of  will  is  effort,  with  move- 
ment as  its  end.  In  a  rough  way,  if  I  may  so  say,  sensation  is 
the  object  upon  which  a  telescope  is  directed ;  thought  is  the 


PERSONALITY    IN    ITS    PSYCHICAL    ASPECT.  85 

instrument  itself,  and  will  is  the  person  using  it;  while  con- 
sciousness is  the  light.  But  an  illustration  '  must  not  be  made 
to  go  upon  all-fours  ' ;  and  so  this  must  not  be  taken  for  more 
than  to  emphasize  the  several  phases  of  any  psychic  event.  It 
wholly  breaks  down  when  the  unity  of  any  such  event  is  taken 
into  account. 

But  all  this  will  come  up  as  we  proceed,  and  so  I  leave  it  for 
the  present,  with  the  remark  that  personality  is  a  mystical  tri- 
unity  —  a  fundamental  exemplification  of  the  problem  about 
which  philosophy,  ancient  and  modern,  has  ever  busied  itself — 
the  co-existence  of  the  '  one  and  the  many,'  perhaps  a  living 
type  of  the  fundamental  mystery  of  the  Christian  Faith. 


86  MECHANISM    AND    PERSONALITY. 


CHAPTER  X. 

DEVELOPMENT   OF   THE   PSYCHICAL   ASPECT   OF   PERSONALITY. 

The  relation  of  the  mechanical  and  psychical  factors.  Mutually  neces- 
sary. The  human  organism  at  birth.  The  line  between  elementary 
consciousness  and  self-realization  shadowy.  Automatic  action.  Basic- 
personality.  Evolution.  Continuity  and  discontinuity.  Instincts.  Jelly- 
specks.  Ants.  Chatodon  restrains.  The  beaver.  Domestic  animals. 
Inverse  order  of  intelligence  and  instincts.  A  Evolution  as  well  as  an 
evolution.  Instincts  gradually  replaced  in  ascending  order  of  nature. 

SENSATION  is  the  common  ground  upon  which  the  self 
and  the  non-self  come  together.  The  psychical  factor  of 
the  personality  must  be  present,  or,  no  matter  what  charac- 
ter or  variety  of  stimuli,  acting  on  the  mechanism,  produce  in 
it  divers  states  or  conditions,  there  would  be  nothing  to  read 
or  interpret  these  states,  and  so  no  sensation :  the  non-self 
must  be  present,  or,  no  matter  how  responsive  the  psychical 
factor  may  be,  there  would  be  nothing  to  know  or  feel,  and  so 
no  sensation.  Of  these  two  factors,  the  external  stimuli  may 
be  regarded  as  prior  in  time,  since  the  psychical  factor  waits  to 
be  acted  on ;  but  logically  the  psychical  factor  must  be  prior, 
since  it  must  be  ready  and  in  waiting.  But  sensation  given,  it 
is  impossible  to  conceive  of  a  total  separation,  and  so  there  is 
no  actual  priority,  any  more  than  in  an  explosion  it  can  be 
said  that  the  spark  is  prior  to  the  gunpowder,  or  the  gun- 
powder prior  to  the  spark.  It  is  a  case  of  '  action  and  reac- 
tion,' which,  by  a  fundamental  law  of  mechanics,  are  always 
equal  and  contrary,  carrying  with  them  the  necessary  notion  of 
simultaneity.  An  external  world  out  of  and  apart  from  all  sen- 


DEVELOPMENT    OF    THE    PSYCHICAL    ASPECT.  8/ 

sation  cannot  be  conceived.  The  self  in  a  state  of  absolute 
isolation,  even  if  sensation  had  been  previously  awakened,  could 
not  retain  sensation,  since  its  own  modes  or  states,  in  such 
case,  must  be  regarded  as  objective,  and  so  take  their  place 
with  the  non-self.  We  must,  therefore,  hold  fast  by  the  reality 
of  the  ego  and  the  non-ego,  as  we  saw  in  the  beginning ;  but 
the  positive  factor  is  the  ego  which  alone  gives  meaning  or 
conceivable  existence  to  the  negative  factor  —  the  non-ego. 

It  cannot  be  denied  that  the  child  comes  into  the  world  in 
an  advanced  state  of  reflex  activity.  The  organism  is  com- 
plete,—  muscles,  nervous  system,  and  all  manner  of  tissue  in 
full  working  order.  It  is  impossible  to  say  whether  there  is  any 
degree  of  consciousness  present  at  and  before  birth,  or  not. 
It  can  hardly  be  denied  from  and  after  that  event,  but  there 
seems  to  be  no  sufficient  physiological  reason  to  fix  upon  any 
exact  moment  at  which  it  makes  its  advent,  and  so  no  reason 
why  some  low  order  of  consciousness  may  not  exist  previous  to 
birth.  That  the  self  is  construed  or  differentiated  in  thought, 
cannot,  of  course,  be  contended  ;  but  personality  must  undoubt- 
edly obtain.  The  self  must  be  before  it  can  know  itself  to  be. 
There  may  be,  for  aught  we  know,  a  whole  world  of  sub- 
consciousness  in  the  region  of  reflex  activity.  The  ego's 
knowledge  of  itself,  or  consciousness  proper,  comes  late,  and 
at  no  distinguishable  date.  The  line  between  elementary  con- 
sciousness and  self-realization  is  altogether  shadowy,  and  logi- 
cally cannot  be  said  to  exist  at  all,  since  the  knowledge  of  a 
beginning  implies  a  knowledge  of  that  which  is  before  the 
beginning.  A  limit  cannot  be  conceived  as  existing  from  one 
side  alone.  A  thing  cannot  be  known  for  what  it  is,  until  it  is 
known  for  what  it  is  not ;  for  otherwise  it  must  expand  itself 
without  limit  in  every  possible  direction,  and  in  every  possible 
quality  or  state ;  and  so,  becoming  limitless  even  in  the  bare 
fact  of  its  existence,  would  be  as  though  it  were  not. 

This  opens  up  to  us  the  consideration  of  that  vast  region  of 


88  MECHANISM    AND    PERSONALITY. 

vital  activity,  called  automatic.  We  cannot  thrust  it  aside,  and 
we  cannot  explain  it  by  the  principle  of  pure  mechanism.  It 
has  in  it,  ex  hypothesi,  that  factor  of  the  Universe  which  is  not 
material,  or,  to  be  safe,  which  removes  living  matter  worlds 
away  from  dead  matter,  —  a  fact  freely  admitted,  as  we  have 
seen,  by  the  leaders  of  scientific  thought.  In  the  lowest  vital- 
ized form,  —  in  the  protoplasmic  unit,  the  life  principle  is  what 
gives  rise  to  structure  or  mechanism,  and  without  it  no  such 
thing  could  come  to  pass. 

There  seems  to  be  no  good  reason  why  the  metaphysician 
and  the  psychologist  should  hesitate  to  go  down  fearlessly  into 
this  world  of  basic  personality  and  claim  for  it  the  heritage 
which  the  physicists  so  freely  proffer.  If  the  evolutionist  can 
build  up  the  marvellous  human  mechanism  out  of  the  minimum 
of  structure,  and  even  it  confessedly  dependent  upon  vitality  as 
a  necessary  condition,  why  may  not  the  psychologist  build  up 
the  conscious  personality  out  of  the  positive  and  antecedent  fact 
which  the  physicist  has  to  borrow  for  his  structural  advance? 
Surely  there  is  an  advantage  in  the  start,  and  in  the  end  the 
jump  from  the  highest  dumb  creature  to  speech-using  man  is 
not  more  desperate  than  the  leap  which  the  physicist  is  com- 
pelled to  make  from  the  highest  brute  mechanism  to  that  of 
the  lowest  human  organism,  plus  his  psychic  nature. 

And  so  with  the  theologian ;  if  he  is  not  to  hold  to  imme- 
diateism  in  the  creation  of  man,  why  may  he  not  reverence 
and  adore  the  Creator  in  the  up-building  of,  and  preparation 
for,  the  human  personality  through  innumerable  sub-conscious 
beings  of  which  He  himself  is  the  Author  and  Sustainer,  as 
fully  as  he  can  in  a  discontinuous  and  orderless  creation.  For, 
admitting  any  sort  of  orderly  sequence  and  dependence  —  and 
who  does  not?  —  it  is  too  late  to  object  to  intermediations, 
unless,  indeed,  the  degree  and  complexity  of  such  dependent 
sequences  is  the  ground  of  complaint,  —  a  position  few  would 
care  to  assume.  Besides,  the  theologian  is  irrevocably  com- 


DEVELOPMENT    OF    THE    PSYCHICAL    ASPECT.  89 

mitted  in  the  Christian  Faith  to  a  stupendous  Messianic  evolu- 
tion; and  perhaps,  when  rightly  understood,  the  Personality 
of  the  Christ  sweeps  through  and  embraces  all  finite  evolutions. 
But  a  theory  which  shall  be  large  enough  to  embrace  Him, 
who  '  lifted  with  His  pierced  hands  empires  off  their  hinges, 
and  turned  the  stream  of  centuries  out  of  its  channel,  and  still 
governs  the  ages/  cannot  be  a  one-sided  half-truth.  When  the 
evolutionist  shall  add  to  the  theory  as  commonly  propounded, 
the  fulness  of  that  life-factor,  acknowledged,  but  made  so  little 
of  in  the  development  of  mechanism,  which  implies  an  ever- 
active  and  intelligent  Personality,  the  physical  side  will  have 
lost  nothing,  and  the  metaphysical  will  feel  itself  no  longer 
outraged. 

Natural  selection  is  a  principle  recognized  as  existing  prior 
to  the  first  possible  movement  towards  the  development  of 
structure;  and  implies  an  active  power  (nature)  behind  it  — 
propulsive  and  purposive  at  every  stage,  from  start  to  finish,  in 
the  up-building  of  tissue.  At  numberless  points  new  principles 
are  necessarily  assumed ;  as  sensation,  volition,  admiration, 
sense  of  beauty,  fitness,  pugnacity,  courtship,  love  of  ornament, 
novelty,  sexual  affinity,  and  morality,  —  all  of  which  belong  to 
the  ideal  world,  and  so  find  their  place  on  the  other  side  of  the 
chasm  which  confessedly  separates  matter,  as  matter,  from 
the  conscious  world.  It  is  a  question  of  no  consequence  as  to 
whether  these  are  added  successively  as  they  are  needed,  ab 
extra,  by  the  power  of  nature  (only  another  name  for  the 
ultimate  source  of  all  activity,  and,  according  to  Mr.  Spencer, 
only  not  the  Infinite  Personality  of  the  Theologians  because 
it  may  be  higher) ,  or  are  potentially  in  the  life-principle  from 
the  beginning.  The  state  of  the  case  is  not  in  the  least  sim- 
plified, whether  it  be  assumed  as  a  perfect  continuum  without 
break  or  pause,  or  as  a  succession  of  stages  with  intervals 
between.  A  continuum  is  inconceivable  (as  will  appear  further 


9O  MECHANISM   AND    PERSONALITY. 

on) ,  and  no  mortal  wit  can  bridge  the  chasm  between  '  sweet ' 
and  '  red/  or  between  '  natural  selection '  and  '  heredity.' 

So  far  as  experience  can  testify,  the  breaks  are  found  all 
along  the  line ;  and  discover  themselves  in  the  most  surprising 
way  in  human  physiology.  For  example,  what  is  Weber's  Law 
but  an  irrefutable  witness  to  a  lack  of  continuity  in  conscious- 
ness in  response  to  unbroken  gradation  in  stimuli?  What  is 
every  heart-beat,  every  pulsation  of  nerve-fibre,  but  the  effect 
of  change  and  discontinuity?  I  do  not  see  that  there  is  trie 
choice  of  a  pin's  point  between  the  action  of  Nature  (the  All- 
Father),  by  successive  starts  and  stops,  or  by  an  unbroken 
continuity  —  either  being  utterly  inconceivable.  But  however 
else  we  may  think,  the  evolutionist  cannot  be  permitted,  with- 
out protest,  to  shut  his  eyes  to  the  life-element,  with  its  psychical 
potentialities,  which  lies  on  the  other  side  the  chasm  which 
separates  mere  mechanism  from  the  thought  world. 

It  would  be  freely  admitted  by  the  evolutionist,  no  doubt, 
that  the  vast  region  of  so-called  automatic  action  in  animal 
tissue  is  due  to  the  life-principle,  which,  starting  in  the  lowest 
protoplasmic  unit,  becomes  more  and  more  marked  as  we 
ascend  towards  man ;  and  that  the  world  of  reflex  action,  called 
instincts,  is  due  to  this  principle. 

This  instinct  world  is  a  wonderland  indeed,  so  complex  and 
unerring  that  it  takes  on  the  look  of  intelligence  and  design. 
Dr.  Carpenter,  speaking  of  jelly-specks  (rhizopods]  says,  Sup- 
pose a  human  mason  to  be  put  down  by  the  side  of  a  pile  of 
stones  of  various  shapes  and  sizes,  and  to  be  told  to  build  a 
dome  of  these,  smooth  on  both  surfaces,  without  using  more 
than  the  least  possible  quantity  of  a  very  tenacious  but  very 
costly  cement  in  holding  the  stones  together.  If  he  accom- 
plished this  well,  he  would  receive  credit  for  great  intelligence 
and  skill.  Yet  this  is  exactly  what  these  little  jelly-specks  do 
on  a  most  minute  scale  ;  the  '  tests  '  they  construct,  when'highly 
magnified,  bearing  comparison  with  the  most  skilful  masonry 


DEVELOPMENT    OF   THE    PSYCHICAL    ASPECT.          QI 

of  man.  From  the  same  sandy  bottom,  one  species  picks  up 
the  coarser  quartz-grains,  cements  them  together  with  phos- 
phate of  iron  secreted  from  its  own  substance,  and  thus  con- 
structs a  flask-shaped  '  test '  having  a  short  neck  and  a  single 
large  orifice.  Another  picks  up  the  finest  grains  and  puts  them 
together  with  the  same  cement  into  perfectly  spherical  '  tests ' 
of  the  most  extraordinary  finish,  perforated  with  numerous 
small  pores,  disposed  at  pretty  regular  intervals.  Another 
selects  the  minutest  sand-grains  and  the  terminal  portions  of 
sponge-spicules,  and  works  them  up  together,  apparently  with 
no  cement  at  all,  by  the  mere  'laying'  of  the  spicules  into 
perfect  white  spheres,  like  homoeopathic  globules,  each  having 
a  single  fissured  orifice.  And  another,  which  makes  a  straight, 
many-chambered  '  test '  that  resembles  in  form  the  chambered 
shell  of  an  Orthoceratite  —  the  conical  mouth  of  each  chamber 
projecting  into  the  cavity  of  the  next,  while  forming  the  walls 
of  its  chambers  of  ordinary  sand-grains  rather  loosely  held 
together,  shapes  the  conical  mouths  of  the  successive  chambers 
by  firmly  cementing  together  grains  of  ferruginous  quartz,  which 
it  must  have  picked  from  the  general  mass. 

Everybody  has  some  knowledge  of  the  wonderful  instinctive 
action  of  bees,  wasps,  ants,  and  other  social  insects.  They  pre- 
sent a  sort  of  parody  on  humanity  in  their  individual  com- 
munity and  governmental  polity.  The  Bee  is  wonderful  enough, 
but  the  Ant  seems  to  be  entitled  to  claim  a  fuller  round  of  the 
virtues  and  vices  of  man-life.  The  '  queen '  has  her  retinue 
of  servants ;  the  community  has  its  architects,  laborers,  nurses, 
foragers,  physicians,  and  soldiers.  They  are  not  without  pam- 
pered aristocrats,  who  '  lord  it  over '  multitudes  of  miserable 
slaves  captured  in  battle  and  '  sold  in  the  shambles.'  They 
have  their  milch-cows  and  beasts  of  burden.  Nor  does  it  all 
look  like  machine  work.  They  appear  to  gather  information 
through  scouts,  assist  each  other  in  emergencies,  contrive  means 
of  meeting  difficulties  purposely  put  in  their  way  by  experi- 


Q2  MECHANISM    AND    PERSONALITY. 

menters,  consult  together.  —  indeed  they  exhibit  in  miniature 
about  all  that  men  do  consciously,  so  much  so,  that  some 
investigators  do  not  hesitate  to  declare  that  in  their  opinion 
they  are  possessed  of  consciousness. 

There  are,  however,  insuperable  difficulties  in  the  way  of 
such  a  conclusion,  —  the  very  perfectness  of  their  movements 
telling  against  the  hypothesis.  Dr.  Carpenter  speaks  of  a 
little  fish  (the  chatodon  rostratus),  which  shoots  out  drops 
of  a  fluid  from  its  prolonged  snout,  so  as  to  strike  insects  that 
happen  to  be  near  the  surface  of  the  water,  thus  causing  them 
to  fall  in,  and  be  brought  within  its  reach.  Now  by  reason  of 
the  refraction  of  light,  as  he  points  out,  the  real  place  of  the 
insect  in  the  air  is  not  that  at  which  it  appears  to  the  eye  in  the 
water,  but  a  little  below  its  apparent  place ;  and  to  this  point 
the  aim  must  be  directed.  The  difference  between  the  real 
and  apparent  place,  moreover,  is  not  constant,  but  varies  con- 
siderably since  the  rays  are  bent  at  different  angles  at  the  surface, 
in  consequence  of  the  difference  of  slant  when  the  insect  is 
directly  above  or  to  one  side  of  the  fish. 

It  is  surely  a  little  too  much  to  assume  that  the  fish  under- 
stands the  laws  of  refraction.  And  besides,  if  the  movements 
of  the  lower  animal  world  are  the  results  of  conscious  intellec- 
tion then  these  lower  orders  are  infinitely  more  intelligent  than 
man,  for  he  does  not  know  how  he  performs  any  bodily 
action, —  he  is  not  conscious  of  what  nerves  or  muscles  he  uses 
in  any  act  of  locomotion  or  speech,  —  indeed,  so  far  as  con- 
sciousness goes  he  does  not  know  that  he  has  either  nerves  or 
muscles. 

But  this  perfectness  of  automatic  action  sometimes  leads  to 
very  absurd  results.  Dr.  Carpenter  gives  the  experience  of 
Mr.  Broderip  with  a  beaver  taken  very  young  and  kept  in  his 
house.  Its  building  instincts  showed  themselves  before  it  was 
half  grown,  when  let  out  of  its  cage,  and  materials  were  put  in 
its  way.  It  would  drag  a  sweeping-brush  or  warming-pan, 


DEVELOPMENT    OF    THE    PSYCHICAL    ASPECT.  93 

taking  the  long  materials  first,  to  the  place  determined  upon 
for  his  structure,  and  placing  some  of  these  perpendicularly  to 
the  wall,  would  fill  up  the  area  with  "  hand-brushes,  rush-baskets, 
boots,  books,  sticks,  cloths,  dried  turf,  or  anything  portable. 
As  the  work  grew  high,  he  supported  himself  with  his  tail,  which 
propped  him  up  admirably ;  and  he  would  often,  after  laying 
on  one  of  his  materials,  sit  up  over  against  it,  appearing  to  con- 
sider his  work,  or,  as  the  country  people  say,  '  judge  it ' ;  this 
pause  was  sometimes  followed  by  changing  the  position  of  the 
material  'judged,'  and  sometimes  it  was  left  in  its  place. 
After  he  had  piled  up  his  materials  in  one  part  of  the  room 
(for  he  generally  chose  the  same  place),  he  proceeded  to  wall 
up  the  space  between  the  feet  of  a  chest  of  drawers  which  stood 
at  a  little  distance  from  it,  high  enough  on  its  legs  to  make  the 
bottom  a  roof  for  him,  using  for  this  purpose  dried  turf  and 
sticks,  which  he  laid  very  even,  and  filling  up  the  interstices 
with  bits  of  coal,  hay,  cloth,  or  anything  he  could  pick  up. 
This  last  place  he  seemed  to  appropriate  for  his  dwelling ;  the 
former  work  seemed  to  be  intended  for  a  dam."  As  Dr.  Car- 
penter says,  nothing  could  be  more  absurd  from  the  reasoning 
point  of  view,  than  the  attempt  of  the  animal  to  construct  a 
dam  where  there  was  no  water,  and  a  house  where  he  was 
already  comfortably  lodged. 

When  we  come  to  the  domestic  animals  we  are  constantly 
misled  into  attributing  conscious  deliberation  and  thought  to 
what  no  doubt  belongs  to  the  domain  of  reflex  phenomena. 
Wonderful  as  the  performances  of  these  creatures  are,  it  is 
hardly  probable  that  any  of  them  ever  reach  the  stage  of  self- 
consciousness.  As  we  have  seen  in  the  insect  world,  the  teach- 
ings of  physiology  would  have  to  be  all  reversed  if  we  were  to 
conclude  that,  with  their  lower  development  of  the  nervous 
organism,  they  have  an  intellectual  eminence  which  is  wanting 
in  far  higher  orders  of  development,  even  in  man.  It  can 
hardly  be  contended  that  even  the  child  has  any  clearly  differ- 


94  MECHANISM    AND    PERSONALITY. 

entiated  self  in  the  first  weeks  or  months  of  its  post-natal  exist- 
ence, —  and  that  after  it  shows  perfectly  well  marked  evidences 
of  thought,  such  as  is  worlds  beyond  what  the  highest  brute 
ever  exhibits ;  and  if  this  be  true,  it  is  not  unreasonable  to 
think  that  no  brute  ever  attains  self-knowledge. 

Again,  it  is  to  be  noted  that  in  the  animal  kingdom  there  is 
a  fairly  well  marked  inverse  ratio  in  the  order  of  intelligence 
and  instinct.  I  am  aware  that  this  has  been  disputed ;  but 
the  arguments  against  it  do  not  seem  to  be  sufficient  to  over- 
set the  opinion  of  Cuvier,  who  asserts  it.  At  any  rate,  man, 
while  standing  at  the  head  of  all  earthly  beings  in  rational 
powers,  certainly  stands  at  the  bottom  in  his  exhibition  of  that 
sort  of  pseudo-intelligence  which  the  creatures  below  him 
possess  at  first  hand  in  such  high  degree,  exhibiting  in  the  ant 
a  complexity  and  perfection  which  startles  one  with  its  likeness 
to  the  slowly  and  painfully  acquired  knowledge  in  man.  The 
calf,  the  colt,  the  pig,  come  into  the  world  thoroughly  furnished 
with  the  power  of  muscular  co-ordination ;  while  man  has  to 
learn  every  step  of  the  way.  They  know —  (observe  here  in 
the  use  of  the  word  '  know,'  how  deeply  the  purely  intellectual 
element  is  read  into  reflex  action)  —  they  know  where  their 
sustenance  is  to  be  found,  and  how  to  get  at  it.  The  infant 
would  perish  if  it  were  not  helped  to  the  breast;  but  once 
there,  the  one  conspicuous  automatic  function  left  man  out  of 
the  infinite  store  below  comes  into  play ;  but  even  that  disap- 
pears, or  is  inhibited  at  will  after  it  has  served  its  purpose ; 
that  is,  as  soon  as  the  child  has  learned  the  complicated  move- 
ments in  the  business  of  mastication,  and  is  furnished  with  the 
necessary  instruments  with  which  to  begin  operation  on  solid 
food.  We  may  well  surmise  that  even  this  sucking  instinct 
would  have  disappeared  with  the  numberless  others,  if  it  had 
not  been  absolutely  necessary  for  the  child  in  its  utterly  helpless 
stage.  Without  this  link  with  the  pseudo-intelligent  world,  all 


DEVELOPMENT    OF    THE    PSYCHICAL    ASPECT.  95 

the  mothers  and  nurses  on  earth  could  not  get  an  infant  over 
the  first  months  of  its  existence. 

The  difference  in  the  lower  animals  is  immense.  Nothing  is 
more  curious  than  to  see,  say,  a  pig,  the  moment  after  birth, 
trot  around,  and  fight  its  way  in  among  its  fellows  for  its  share 
of  the  lacteal  supply.  Thus  there  seems  to  be  an  order  of 
devolution,  as  well  as  an  order  of  evolution,  along  which  Nature 
works,  —  parallel,  though  bearing  an  inverse  ratio  to  each  other  : 
the  one  moving  from  inchoate  structure  towards  greater  and 
greater  specialization  and  complexity ;  the  other,  starting  in 
purely  instinctive  self-motion,  loses  its  blind  cleverness  by 
stages,  until  it  all  but  disappears  in  man.  The  one  starts  in 
potentiality,  out  of  which  more  and  more  complex  structural 
forms  emerge ;  the  other  starts  in  determinism,  and  emerges 
in  potentiality.  It  seems  probable  that  this  inverse  ratio  could 
be  traced  backward  along  the  whole  line  of  the  evolutionists, 
but  I  can  only  illustrate  what  I  mean.  Thus,  though  man  has 
been  a  speech-using  animal  all  through  the  ages,  no  child  ever 
comes  into  the  world  with  a  word  ready  formed  on  his  lips, 
while  the  potentiality  or  capacity  for  language  and  the  mechan- 
ism necessary  therefore  has  been  greatly  increased.  The  Fly- 
catcher, just  out  of  the  shell,  strikes  at  and  captures  an  insect 
with  the  utmost  precision ;  the  infant,  with  a  native  power  to 
master  the  problems  of  the  stellar  depths,  knows  nothing  at 
the  start  of  directions  and  distances.  This,  it  seems  to  me,  is 
a  fundamental  distinction.  Mechanism  is  potentiality  fettered 
by  determinism ;  personality  is  determinism  swallowed  up  in 
potentiality. 

It  may  not  be  out  of  place  to  say  that  in  all  this  I  am  far 
from  implying  anything  touching  the  ultimate  destiny  of  the 
inferior  animals.  I  have  no  desire  to  go  beyond  Bishop  But- 
ler, who  declares  any  discrimination  against  the  brute  creation 
in  this  regard  to  be  both  '  invidious  and  weak,'  speaking  of  it 
with  scorn  as  '  the  invidious  thing.'  Nor  do  I  ignore  the  fact 


96  MECHANISM    AND    PERSONALITY. 

that  some,  perhaps  all  animals,  are  teachable,  and  have  under- 
standing in  some  degree,  and  so  are  conscious,  though  not 
self-conscious ;  while,  on  the  other  hand,  man,  is,  in  the  begin- 
ning, and  remains  through  life,  dependent  in  great  measure 
upon  the  reflex  mechanism  of  his  nature,  yet  he  is  almost 
without  instinct  proper,  that  is,  action  which  has  the  look  of 
intelligent  forecasting,  but  is  really  the  result  of  a  blind  propul- 
sion. Instinct  is  gradually  replaced  in  the  ascending  order  of 
nature  by  understanding ;  and  whatever  can  be  learned  by 
conscious  effort  is  left  to  be  so  acquired :  and  thus  it  is  that 
man,  infinite  in  power  and  wisdom  potentially,  is  at  birth  the 
most  helpless  and  ignorant  of  all  created  beings. 


THE  CONCEPT-FORMING  PROCESS.          97 


CHAPTER   XL 

THE   CONCEPT-FORMING   PROCESS. 

Muscular  co-ordination.  Education  of  the  organism.  Vital  organs  not 
under  control  of  the  will.  Analogous  psychical  conditions.  Process  of 
thought  development.  Like  and  unlike.  Discovery  of  meaning.  Atten- 
tion. Retention.  Concepts.  Concept-masses.  Apperception.  Thought 
as  thought.  Language.  Introspection.  «  Pure '  and  '  Empirical  Ego.'  The 
'  One  '  and  the  '  Many.'  A  sense  of  knowing  deeper  than  '  understanding.' 
Personality  antedates  knowledge. 

THE  human  organism  in  its  infinite  complexity  is  com- 
plete at  birth.  The  muscles  are  already  equal  to  con- 
siderable effort.  It  is  not  for  lack  of  strength  that  the  infant 
does  not  use  hands  and  feet  at  once,  but  because  it  does  not 
know  how  to  co-ordinate  the  complex  system  of  muscles.  This 
co-ordinating  power  has  to  be  gradually  acquired  through  con- 
scious effort.  Even  the  reflex-centres,  in  large  part,  have  to 
learn  their  work.  This  education  is  accomplished  in  the  begin- 
ning through  a  low  order  of  consciousness,  —  sub-consciousness, 
indeed.  The  self  does  not  know  what  the  office  of  any  organ 
of  the  body  is,  nor  where  it  is,  nor  even  that  there  are  any 
organs ;  but  the  vital  tides,  so  to  speak,  surge  to  and  fro 
throughout  the  mechanism,  and  the  infant  finds,  little  by  little, 
that  it  has  power  to  control  the  movements  of  the  body,  and 
purposive  effort  follows.  The  exercise  of  distinctive  purposive 
action  doubtless  long  precedes  any  proper  recognition  of  the 
end  in  view,  or  the  means  by  which  it  is  reached. 

There  is  a  constant  play  between  the  three  fundamental 
modes  of  the  personality  —  sensibility,  cognition,  and  conation 
—  each  performing  its  office  because  it  cannot  help  it ;  while 


98  MECHANISM    AND    PERSONALITY. 

the  reflex  nerve-centres  learn  their  parts  in  response  to  voli- 
tional command,  at  first  painfully  and  slowly,  until  at  last  they 
perform  their  functions  with  automatic  promptness.  In  learn- 
ing to  play  on  an  instrument,  to  sew,  or  to  knit,  everybody 
knows  how  slowly  and  awkwardly  the  fingers  respond  to  the 
bidding  of  the  will ;  and  how  many  times  a  movement  must 
be  gone  over  before  smoothness  and  certainty  can  be  had ;  but 
after  awhile,  the  fingers  seem  to  do  the  work  of  themselves. 
What  is  more  striking,  they  seem  to  be  able  to  do  their  parts 
better,  in  mere  mechanical  actions,  without  thought  than  with 
it.  Take  one  who  has  a  little  knowledge  of  (say)  the  flute, 
let  him  work  out  a  few  tunes  from  the  notes  with  the  tyro 
flutist's  usual  persistence,  until  they  are  well  memorized.  He 
will  now  play  them  better  when  unconscious  of  effort  than 
when  he  bends  his  whole  soul  to  the  performance.  Moreover, 
the  fingers  will  now  do  for  him  in  their  office,  what  he  for  his 
life  cannot  tell  them  in  advance  they  ought  to  do.  If  you  ask 
our  supposed  youth,  for  example,  what  the  fingering  is  in  the 
fifth  bar  of  any  familiar  piece,  or  what  notes  will  be  used  in 
transposing  that  bar  to  another  familiar  key,  he  cannot  at  once 
tell  you ;  but  the  fingers  will  make  their  dispositions  in  either 
case  without  the  slightest  hesitancy  as  they  come  to  them  in 
order.  In  this  case  there  has  been  conscious  effort  at  every 
step  along  the  way ;  but  the  reflex  centres  when  they  have 
once  thoroughly  learned  their  part  are  rather  hindered  than 
helped  by  any  officious  interference  on  the  part  of  the  under- 
standing. This  work  of  translating  thought  and  purpose  into 
automatic  action  goes  on  from  the  earliest  stages  of  infancy 
till  the  close  of  life,  so  that  it  may  be  said  at  last  that  we  belong 
to  our  habits,  rather  than  that  our  habits  belong  to  us.  The 
simple  truth  is,  man  is  born  a  co-ordinator  and  unifier  •  and 
he  begins  his  work,  by  virtue  of  a  propelling  power  which 
comes  with  him  somehow,  long  before  he  knows  what  being  in 
the  world  means ;  and  continues  long  after  he  has  found  out, 


THE  CONCEPT-FORMING  PROCESS.          99 

or  has  given  it  up.  This  power  is  a  simple  fact,  wrought  into 
his  nature  by  the  All-Father,  or,  if  one  likes  it  better,  by  that 
'  Unknown  Cause  of  things '  which,  if  not  personal,  is  '  some- 
thing higher  than  Personality.'  Through  this  power,  which 
man  can  neither  get  out  of  his  nature  nor  explain,  the  fruits  of 
conscious  work  are  all  the  time  passing  into  the  unconscious, 
and,  no  doubt,  essential  personality,  in  its  two-fold  factors  — 
physical  and  psychical. 

But  let  us  be  careful  to  distinguish  at  this  point.  As  has 
been  often  said  already,  the  human  organism  is  full  of  reflex 
activities,  but  of  instincts  proper,  that  is,  of  activities  which 
appear  to  be  intelligently  directed  but  are  not,  it  has  a  very 
minimum.  The  mere  mechanism  upon  which  the  psychical 
factor  of  the  personality  is  superposed  is  in  a  great  degree 
independent  of  conscious  energy.  Most  of  the  organs  of  the 
body  do  their  work  without  thought,  and  in  spite  of  it.  The 
heart  with  the  whole  vascular  system,  the  respiratory  organs, 
the  sympathetic  and  gastric  systems,  and  even  the  nervous 
system,  in  large  part,  are  essentially  automatic,  out  of  and 
beyond  the  control  of  volition ;  and  this  for  the  plain  reason 
that  they  could  not  be  trusted  to  volitional  control.  If  the 
heart  and  lungs  were  dependent  upon  the  will,  we  could  not 
maintain  our  existence.  We  should  die  in  some  moment  of 
forgetfulness,  or  in  sleep.  The  mechanism  of  the  personality 
is  precontrived  for  us,  and  regulates  itself.  We  are  given  a 
limited  control,  indeed,  but  only  by  violence  can  we  stop  or 
resist  its  action.  But  in  all  this,  it  will  be  observed,  no  knowl- 
edge or  semblance  of  knowledge  comes  to  us.  The  organism 
will  not,  untaught,  draw  a  straight  line  for  us,  nor  shape  a 
letter,  utter  a  word,  or  tell  us  a  single  fact  in  mathematics, 
geography,  or  physics.  It  only  stands  ready  to  help  us  to  all 
these,  and  to  untold  stores  of  knowledge  beyond.  Thus  man 
potentially  knows  all  that  can  be  known,  but  actually  knows 
nothing  whatever. 


100  MECHANISM    AND    PERSONALITY. 

In  like  way,  there  are  certain  fixed  and  necessary  elements 
discoverable  in  the  psychic  factor.  We  must  think,  and  feel, 
and  act;  we  must  combine  and  contrive;  and  in  exerting 
these  psychical  activities,  we  fall  upon  certain  absolutely  neces- 
sary truths  which  we  neither  make,  nor  are  able  to  unmake ; 
as  that  we  exist,  and  things  exist,  —  that  one  thing  is  not 
another  thing,  —  and  that  three  things  are  more  than  two  things, 
and  all  that :  but  not  one  of  these  is  a  ready  formed  notion  in 
the  mind.  In  between,  there  is  a  vast  area  of  purely  volitional 
control,  and  through  it  we  are  constantly  changing,  for  the 
better  or  worse,  both  the  physical  and  psychical  factors. 

It  is  no  good  to  resist  or  complain :  we  are  given  a  certain 
capital ;  we  must  use  and  increase  it,  or  abuse  and  lose  it. 
To  express  it  in  another  way  :  nature  gives  man  power  to  know, 
but  furnishes  him  with  no  ready-made  knowledge. 

Through  external  stimuli,  and  by  means  of  the  several  organs 
of  sense,  the  rational  nerve-centres  are  forced  to  respond  in 
certain  reactions,  which  would  remain  simply  and  forever  reac- 
tions and  nothing  more,  if  it  were  not  for  the  psychical  power 
of  co-ordinating  and  arranging.  No  single  sensory  effect  could 
have  meaning,  and  no  thousands,  so  long  as  each  one  remained 
isolated  and  unlinked  to  the  others.  It  is  not  enough  that  they 
shall  simply  be,  or  that  they  shall  be,  in  themselves,  like  or 
unlike,  —  precede  and  follow,  —  but  the  self  must  discover  this 
before  the  notion  of  agreement  and  difference  can  arise  in  the 
personality.  It  is  not  until  after  these  successive  and  varying 
reactions  have  come  before  the  co-ordinating  and  unifying 
activity  of  the  self,  over  and  over  again,  that  the  new  thing, 
1  meaning,'  stands  out  in  consciousness.  If  a  rose  be  the 
stimulus,  the  vibrations  of  the  luminiferous  ether  are  not  '  red,' 
the  irritations  of  the  olfactory  nerve  are  not '  sweet,'  nor  are  the 
tremors  of  the  muscles  of  the  fingers  '  heavy,'  nor  are  they  all 
together  in  any  wise  like  the  notion  of  the  rose  in  the  mind. 
They  are  each  and  all  of  them  but  the  physical  signs  by  which 


THE  CONCEPT-FORMING  PROCESS.         IOI 

the  self  reads  into  them  the  meaning  which  is  the  mental 
rose. 

This  may  be  understood  by  a  telegraphic  message.  The 
ticking  of  the  instrument  might  go  on  forever,  without  any 
message,  if  there  were  no  operator  who  knew  the  signification 
of  the  clicks ;  but  by  one  who  understands  what  to  most  of  us 
are  but  senseless  sounds,  they  are  woven  together  until  the 
meaning  is  clear.  This  power  to  '  understand  '  is  so  familiar  to 
us  that  we  can  hardly  enter  into  its  wonder.  '  Meaning '  is 
wholly  unlike,  in  degree  and  kind,  the  electrical  impulses  along 
the  wire,  or  the  ticking  which  results. 

The  electrical  transmission  is  analogous  to  the  action  of  the 
sensory  nerve ;  the  click  of  the  instrument  may  be  compared 
to  the  reaction  of  the  nerve-cell,  but  the  meaning  is  only  in  the 
mind  of  the  operator.  Motion  in  any  form  is  but  a  fact  of 
mechanism,  and  its  physical  results  are  but  dead  symbols ;  in 
themselves  wholly  meaningless  until  the  psychical  factor  appears 
upon  the  scene.  Between  this  factor  and  the  symbols  is  a 
world-wide  chasm  over  which  no  conceivable  bridge  has  ever 
been  built  by  the  wit  of  man ;  and  yet  this  chasm  is  crossed 
and  recrossed  in  fact,  every  moment  of  our  lives. 

We  see,  then,  that  it  is  not  any  individual  nerve-action,  nor 
any  succession  of  them  that  is  sensation,  but  it  is  their  inter- 
pretation through  the  arranging  and  co-ordinating  power  of  the 
self.  Sensation  proper  is  thus  not  physical,  though  it  has  a 
physical  basis,  but  belongs  to  the  psychical  side  of  personality. 
Now,  in  order  that  there  shall  be  arrangement,  there  must  be 
attention  or  conation ;  so  that  the  action  of  the  inchoate  will 
must  be  present  in  interpreting  the  most  elementary  signs 
which  come  to  the  self  from  the  external  world.  But,  as  we 
have  seen,  attention  to  individual  or  isolated  sensory  actions 
would  accomplish  nothing,  —  there  would  be  no  meaning  in  a 
bare  fact  out  of  relation;  so  that  there  is  another  element 
necessary  before  any  co-ordination  shall  take  place  ;  it  is  reten- 


102  MECHANISM    AND    PERSONALITY. 

tion.  The  present  sensory  act  must  be  put  alongside  of,  and 
compared  with,  other  such  acts,  and  the  likeness  or  difference 
noted.  But  all  save  the  present  act  are  gone  :  they  must 
therefore  be  brought  back  by  some  power ;  and  this  power  we 
recognize  in  retention,  or  the  rudimentary  memory.  We  have 
now  all  that  is  necessary  to  the  formation  of  a  concept,  —  divers 
sensory  acts  held  together  by  the  elementary  memory,  attention 
by  which  activity  is  directed,  and  the  understanding  by  which 
they  are  seen  to  agree  or  disagree.  A  '  concept '  (con-capio, 
to  bring  together)  is  thus  the  product  or  joint  action  of  all 
the  several  modes  of  the  ego,  sensation,  cognition,  and  cona- 
tion, and,  if  I  may  so  say,  on  the  field  of  memory  and  in  the 
light  of  consciousness. 

In  the  above  elementary  exposition  of  the  concept-forming 
process,  we  have  left  out  of  sight  all  details  so  as  to  present 
the  matter  simply  and  connectedly.  It  has,  perhaps,  been 
sufficiently  indicated  that  there  are  many  stages  between  the 
dawn  of  conscious  recognition  of  things  and  events,  and  the 
full  day  of  external  perception  and  self-introspection. 

In  all  the  earlier  stages,  concepts  are  vague  and  ill-formed 
—  they  have  been  called  gathering  mists  or  cloud-masses. 
These  are  ever  changing,  through  the  rushing  in  of  newly 
formed  concepts,  and,  as  in  the  beginning  the  child  has  no 
prejudices  (which  is  only  another  way  of  saying  that  its  con- 
cepts have  not  yet  become  permanent),  these  masses  are  ever 
breaking  up  and  reforming  under  the  action  of  accumulating 
material.  Gradually  those  notions  which  have  gathered  into 
themselves  as  a  centre  the  multiform  fragments  of  half-formed 
concepts,  endure  and  become  for  us  the  real  and  actual. 

This  reaction  of  mind  in  unifying  the  materials  of  knowledge 
is  called  (  apperception.'  The  older  and  better  formed  con- 
cepts (to  continue  our  material  simile),  meet  and  absorb,  or 
modify  the  newer.  The  older  concept  is  called  the  'apper- 
ceiving'  —  the  newer,  the  '  apperceived.'  The  once  formed 


THE  CONCEPT-FORMING  PROCESS.         IO3 

and  measurably  permanent  notion  has  a  great  advantage  over 
one  just  emerging  in  consciousness.  It  will  attract  to  itself 
what  is  like,  and  reject  what  is  incompatible  in  the  new.  There 
is  thus  a  fairly  steady  growth,  and  an  increasing  confidence  in 
our  own  ideally-real  world ;  and  this  becomes  stronger  until 
no  sort  of  new  notion  can  gain  a  permanent  footing  in  the 
presentative,  or  sense-perception  area;  as  well  as  in  another 
region  —  the  rational  or  a  priori  area,  of  which  we  shall  have 
a  good  deal  to  say  further  on. 

But  there  is  still  another  and  a  less  permanent  field  —  what 
may  be  called  the  region  of  contingent  and  speculative  knowl- 
edge, in  which  radical  changes  may  be  wrought  by  the  presen- 
tation of  new  matter.  Older  apperceptive  strongholds  are 
sometimes  broken  up,  and  the  ordinary  process  reversed ;  but 
this  becomes  more  and  more  rare  as  age  advances. 

It  will  be  seen  that  the  simplest  concept  is  a  fasciculus  or 
bundle,  never  one  and  single.  We  have  here  once  more,  the 
'  many  in  one.'  In  its  formation  we  have  the  process  of  differ- 
entiation, or  differencing,  inasmuch  as  the  individual  elements 
which  compose  the  complex  whole  must  be  distinguished,  be- 
fore they  can  be  united.  We  have  also  the  process  of  '  inte- 
gration,' or  bringing  together  into  unity.  That  is  to  say,  we 
have  rudimentary  analysis  and  synthesis ;  and  each  implies  the 
other,  inasmuch  as  there  can  be  no  whole,  without  a  recog- 
nition of  parts ;  and  no  parts,  without  the  recognition  of  the 
whole.  They  are,  thus,  but  the  two  phases  of  the  same  act, 
like  the  fabled  shield  which  was  both  '  argent  and  gold.' 

It  is  plain,  also,  that  there  must  be  discrimination  or  com- 
parison in  the  lowest  concept  formation.  Thus  the  thought- 
power,  in  its  elementary  form,  reaches  down  to  the  very  bottom 
of  all  sense-perception  ;  but  in  this  low  form  it  does  not  stand 
out  as  clearly  differentiated  thought.  It  is  not  until  the  process 
of  apperception  is  well  advanced  that  we  recognize  thought  as 
thought.  When  concept  is  compared  with  concept,  the  pur- 


IO4  MECHANISM    AND    PERSONALITY. 

posive  action  of  the  will  becomes  manifest,  and  we  have  what 
has  been  called  'redintegration.'  We  may  now  be  properly 
said  to  think ;  and  the  product  of  the  thought  is  a  larger  or 
resulting  concept  called  a  judgment.  Thus,  a  judgment  may 
be  defined  to  be  the  recognition  of  the  agreement  or  disagree- 
ment of  two  concepts. 

But  the  two  concepts  so  compared  must  have  each  a  mental 
form  or  sign,  else  they  could  not  be  recognized  so  as  to  be 
compared.  These  signs  are  subjective  words,  and  when  they 
are  given  articulate,  or  any  sort  of  expression,  they  are  lan- 
guage. Taken  with  this  modification,  Professor  Max  Miiller, 
and  those  who  preceded  him,  are  certainly  right  in  the  declara- 
tion that  there  can  be  no  thought  without  language.  We  shall 
have  to  return  to  this  further  on. 

Our  knowledge  of  the  outer  world  is  built  up,  as  we  have 
seen,  through  sense-perception ;  but  there  is  a  vast  domain 
which  the  senses  do  not  discover,  but  grows  out  of  those  psy- 
chical limitations  spoken  of  a  moment  ago.  Such  notions  as 
'  truth,'  and  '  right/  and  '  mercy '  have  no  discoverable  element 
in  common  with  sense-perception.  One  cannot  see  '  mercy  ' 
with  the  eye,  nor  discover  it  by  any  other  sense  ;  and  it  has  no 
likeness  to  anything  in  external  nature.  There  must  be  then 
another  and  a  higher  domain  than  the  external,  and  the  way  to 
it  is  quite  different  from  that  through  the  senses.  What  we  have 
been  so  far  speaking  of  may  be  called  '  sensuous  truth ' ;  this 
higher  region  ' rational  truth.'  I  only  mention  it  here,  that 
we  may  not  hastily  conclude  that  the  world  of  sense  furnishes 
us  with  all  knowledge. 

Again,  there  is  self-knowledge,  or  a  comprehension  of  the 
fact  that  we  'know,'  and  what  we  know,  —  the  knowledge  of 
our  own  thoughts  and  emotions,  —  the  phenomenon  of  self- 
consciousness.  The  knowledge  of  the  body  belongs,  of  course, 
to  sense-perceptions.  My  hand  is  an  external  object  to  my 
mind,  as  much  so  as  a  book  or  table  :  so  is  any  member,  organ, 


THE    CONCEPT-FORMING    PROCESS.  IO5 

or  tissue,  or  so  much  of  any  one  as  can  be  made  an  object  of 
sense-perception. 

In  like  manner,  I  not  only  think  and  feel,  but  I  can  make 
my  thought  or  feeling  an  object  of  thought.  Thus  I  turn  my 
thought-power  inward,  and  think  upon  the  notions  or  states  of 
the  self.  Now  these  notions  or  states  are  not  the  self,  any 
more  than  the  hand  or  the  foot  is  the  self.  They  are,  however, 
phenomena  of  the  self.  Everything  I  know  of,  or  in,  the  self, 
is  an  experience  of  the  ego  ;  and  all  these  put  together  consti- 
tute what  is  called  the  '  empirical  ego ' :  while  the  subject  of 
all  such  experiences  —  the  essential  self — is  called  the  'pure 
ego.' 

Now  it  is  the  '  pure  ego '  that  is  the  one,  original  and  indis- 
putable fact  for  every  man ;  and  so,  known  to  each  of  us  in  a 
way  no  other  fact  can  be  known.  It  is  the  basic  truth  to  which 
every  other  truth  must  be  referred  —  the  centre  and  source  of 
all  certainty.  As  such  it  cannot  be  tried  or  measured  by  any 
other  truth  whatever.  If  it  were  so,  it  would  at  once  follow 
that  there  could  be  a  higher  and  more  certain  truth.  It  is 
therefore  ultimate,  self- asserting,  single.  It  is  not  possible  to 
compare  it  with  anything  else,  because  it  is  a  unicum,  without 
place  or  parts,  and  cannot  be  said  to  be  known  in  thought  at 
all,  since  thought  implies  relations.  I  know  it  all  the  time  and 
every  how  —  in  sensation,  thought  and  will;  but  these  phe- 
nomena do  not  prove  it  to  me.  It  is  susceptible  of  no  proof, 
for  it  is  beforehand  with  all  possible  proof.  It  is  not  suscepti- 
ible  of  definition,  for  its  sole  limitation  is  that  which  involves 
the  self  as  a  necessary  factor.  To  say,  '  I  am  I '  is  an  identical 
proposition  which  advances  nothing.  To  say, '  I  am  not,  not  I,' 
separates  it  indeed  from  all  but  itself,  but  that  not-itself  depends 
solely  upon  the  self  for  its  content. 

And  yet  the  self  exhibits  modes  and  activities;  feeling, 
thought,  and  action  are  its  notes,  or  marks ;  and  they  have  no 
meaning  apart  from  it.  Here  we  are  brought  face  to  face 


IO6  MECHANISM    AND    PERSONALITY. 

again  with  the  eternal  riddle  of  philosophy  —  the  'one  and  the 
many.'  As  we  have  already  seen,  we  can  neither  understand 
the  '  one/  nor  the  '  many  •  except  as  either  acts  as  the  back- 
ground of  the  other.  The  one  cannot  have  parts,  nor  sides, 
nor  phases  —  since  it  would  then  cease  to  be  'one.'  It  cannot 
have  place  in  space  nor  in  time  :  it  must  be  out  of  all  possible 
relation ;  and  so  have  nothing  left  by  which  to  make  itself 
known;  and  thus  the  manifold  must  be  brought  back  before 
the  one  can  have  any  sort  of  meaning  for  us. 

But  the  'many'  is  in  just  as  bad  case.  It  can  have  no 
meaning  without  the  one,  for  each  attribute,  sign,  or  note  must 
be  recognized  as  '  one '  before  it  can  be  cognized  at  all.  The 
many  cannot  be  many  except  it  be  composed  of  elements  or 
units.  But  all  this  lies  in  the  province  of  metaphysic,  and  is 
familiar  to  every  student  of  philosophy.  It  is  as  old  as  Par- 
menides,  and  found  everywhere  through  Plato.  It  is  hydra- 
headed,  always  starting  up  whenever  we  force  our  thought  into 
the  region  of  the  ultimate. 

Now,  we  do  without  doubt  know  the  '  one,'  and  no  plain 
man  ever  suspects  that  there  is  any  trouble  about  it,  and  per- 
haps would  fail  to  see  any  after  the  most  persistent  efforts  to 
point  it  out;  and  so  with  the  'many.'  There  is  a  sense  of 
knowing,  therefore,  which  is  deeper  than  that  of  mere  intellec- 
tion. What  we  commonly  call  the  understanding  must  deal 
with  subject  and  predicate.  That  it  is  at  all,  depends  upon 
the  shackles  in  which  it  is  bound.  It  cannot  transcend  the 
trammels  of  limitation ;  but  the  self,  as  we  have  seen,  is  not 
the  mere  intellect, — the  intellect  being  itself  but  a  mode  of 
the  self,  and  dependent  upon  it.  The  self  is,  therefore,  logically 
prior  to  the  first  dawn  of  the  intellect  and  is  its  source  and 
support.  It  comes,  somehow,  at  first  hand  from  the  source  of 
all  giving. 

There  is  a  sense,  I  repeat,  in  which  we  use  the  word  '  know,' 
that  is  deeper  than  that  in  which  we  use  it  when  we  speak  of  a 


THE    CONCEPT-FORMING    PROCESS. 

cognition  through  the  understanding.  It  is  the  sense  in  which 
I  know  my  own  existence,  though  I  cannot  construe  or  explain 
it  to  myself  or  another  —  the  sense  in  which  I  know  my  thought 
to  be  mine,  and  one  thought  to  be  different  from  another.  It 
is  the  ground  of  all  first-hand  knowledge,  the  only  warrant,  ulti- 
mate truth  of  any  kind  can  have.  It  comes  nearest  to  being 
pure  feeling,  perhaps,  and  is  a  condition  of  all  knowing  in  the 
sphere  of  relations.  Truths  of  this  primordial  character,  I  can 
reflect  upon,  note  their  activities,  and  wonder  at ;  but  cannot 
construe  —  they  have  no  quale  or  whatness  for  me.  Thus, 
while  I  know  that  I  am  what  I  am  in  my  essential  personality, 
by  a  necessity  that  is  absolute  and  inexplicable,  the  self  which 
I  construe,  I  know  only  through  my  modes  and  activities.  This 
empirical  knowledge  has  the  self  for  its  subject,  and  is  what  we 
call  introspection,  —  self-consciousness.  It  is  the  manifesta- 
tion of  the  self  to  the  self — the  intellectual  apprehension  of 
the  '  empirical  ego.' 

This  introspection  or  self-conscious  knowledge  is  difficult, 
and  therefore  late  in  development.  It  undoubtedly  lags  con- 
siderably behind  sense-perceptions,  and  like  it  undergoes  the 
apperceiving  process.  It  is  thus  shifting  and  variable,  growing 
into  greater  and  greater  stability.  This  is  why  people  know 
themselves  so  little,  and  so  different  from  what  they  appear  to 
be  as  seen  by  others  —  felicitously  put  by  Dr.  Holmes  in  his 
"Three  Johns."  Out  of  this  mass  of  self-knowledge,  there  is 
built  up  a  concept,  appearing  no  one  knows  exactly  when, 
which  we  call  the  *  me  '  —  the  '  myself.'  This  also  belongs  to 
the  intellectual  zone  of  our  being,  and  is  the  result  of  the  some 
time  continued  action  of  the  'pure  ego.'  This  'pure  ego' 
stands,  from  an  epistemological  point  of  view,  in  quite  an  analo- 
gous category  with  the  substance  or  '  itness  '  of  any  material 
object,  with  the  difference  that  the  substance  of  the  object  gets 
its  meaning  wholly  from  the  ego.  Personality,  which  is  but 


108  MECHANISM    AND    PERSONALITY. 

another  name  for  the  '  pure  ego,'  antedates  all  understanding 
of  itself,  and  it  is  in  the  active  enjoyment  of  its  manifold  pre- 
rogatives long  before  it  has  any  explicit  knowledge  of  its  heri- 
tage, much  as  an  infant  king  is  actually  a  sovereign  long  before 
he  has  any  apprehension  of  the  dignity  to  which  he  is  born. 


FUNDAMENTAL    MODES    OF    THE   SELF. MEMORY.    ICX) 


CHAPTER  XII. 

THE   FUNDAMENTAL   MODES   OF   THE   SELF.  —  MEMORY. 

Consciousness.  Differentiation  of  Feeling.  Of  Cognition.  Of  Will. 
An  end  ideally  first.  Self-development.  Perception.  Intuition.  Ideas  in 
the  mind  not  like  objects  without.  Space.  Time.  Memory.  Mechanical 
basis.  Objection  of  Lotze.  Complexity.  Illustration  from  Sound.  Phe- 
nomena explicable  upon  theory  of  mechanical  basis.  Dr.  Rush's  case. 
Dr.  Carpenter's  Welshman.  Coleridge's  case.  Power  to  recall  the  past. 
Sudden  recollections.  Law  of  Association. 

CONSCIOUSNESS  may  be  called  the  daylight  of  the  self. 
Whenever  any  psychical  effort  or  reaction  rises  above  the 
intellectual  horizon,  —  which  may  be  called  the  threshold  of  cog- 
nition, —  the  self  recognizes  it,  and  this  recognition  is  what 
we  call  understanding.  But  the  line  of  separation  between  the 
conscious  and  the  unconscious  events  of  Personality,  is  not 
definite  and  exact,  but  vague  and  shadowy,  like  the  separation 
between  night  and  day.  A  vast  amount  of  the  life-history  of 
the  ego  lies  below  the  illuminated  circle,  in  the  totally  obscure 
or  dimly-illuminated  region.  All  reflex  action  proper,  and  all 
the  rudimentary  work  of  apperception  lie  either  below  the 
horizon  of  consciousness,  or  in  the  border-land.  This  is  not 
only  true  in  the  initial  stages  of  existence,  and  during  the 
gradual  evolution  of  self-recognition,  but  it  is  true  all  through 
life  to  its  very  end.  Thus  it  is  that  we  know  nothing  of  the 
greater  part  of  the  bodily  movements  under  our  control ;  nor 
of  much  that  goes  on  about  us  at  any  time ;  while  we  know 
nothing  of  what  takes  place  when  we  are  asleep,  or  otherwise 
unconscious.  It  would  be  intolerable  if  one  had  to  be  con- 


IIO  MECHANISM    AND    PERSONALITY. 

scious  of  the  movement  of  every  muscle,  the  action  of  every 
nerve-fibre,  and  of  every  object  and  event  about  one  in  the 
external  world.  It  should  seem  that  one  of  the  chief  functions 
of  the  '  inhibitory '  mechanism  is  to  produce  silence,  so  to 
speak,  in  the  auditorium  of  consciousness,  when  attention  is 
not  necessary,  somewhat  as  the  musician  lays  his  hands  upon 
the  strings  of  the  harp  to  stop  their  vibration  when  they  have 
done  their  office. 

Now,  as  a  fact,  out  of  the  sub-conscious  personality,  either 
by  the  development  of  a  new  and  higher  physical  basis  of 
^psychical  action,  or  from  the  further  and  more  delicate  differen- 
tiation of  existing  nerve  organisms,  there  does  emerge  what  we 
have  called  the  dawn  and  daylight  of  the  self.  It  is  only  then 
that  we  begin  to  recognize  the  three  fundamental  conscious 
activities  of  the  self,  so  repeatedly  spoken  of,  —  sensation,  cog- 
nition, and  conation. 

Let  us  look  at  these  separately  for  a  moment.  First,  sensa- 
tion, which  shows  itself  from  the  protozoa  up,  has  been  an 
active  agent  in  the  work  of  tissue  building  in  all  reflex  mechan- 
isms on  to  the  evolution  of  the  psychical  centres ;  but  when 
consciousness,  in  its  own  right,  appears  upon  the  scene,  it  takes 
an  immense  flight,  and  becomes  what  we  call  '  feeling.'  With 
it  comes  a  new  heaven  and  a  new  earth.  Old  things  have 
passed  away.  It  is  a  translation  into  light  out  of  darkness.  It 
is  true,  the  personality  cannot  maintain  itself  wholly  in  the  new 
regions  so  revealed.  The  roots  must  still  remain  in  the  soil 
below,  and  so  the  immense  mechanical  work  which  is  necessary 
as  a  substratum  of  this  new  world  of  feeling  is  carried  on  still 
by  the  same  sub-conscious  agencies. 

With  regard  to  cognition,  or  the  power  which  discovers 
meaning  in  things  and  events,  that,  too,  has  been  working  all 
through  the  processes  of  advancement.  It  is,  indeed,  difficult 
to  form  any  notion  of  what  '  meaning '  can  be  when  not  lighted 
up  by  consciousness ;  but,  when  rightly  considered,  not  more 


FUNDAMENTAL    MODES    OF    THE    SELF.  —  MEMORY.     Ill 

difficult  than  to  conceive  what  unconstmed  sensation  can  be. 
We,  from  the  sphere  of  consciousness,  are  compelled  to  read 
into  it,  as  well  as  into  sub-conscious  sensation,  what  conscious 
experience  has  taught  us.  There  is,  however,  a  solution  of  this 
which  must  be  admitted  as  a  possible  hypothesis,  and  which  to 
many  seems  the  true  way  of  regarding  it.  It  is  that  the  per- 
sonality through  the  whole  of  its  sub-conscious  period  has  its 
feeling  and  its  thought  in  and  through  the  Infinite  Personality, 
—  that  as  the  Ultimate  Causative  Power  is  leading,  or  propel- 
ling all  processes  on  to  an  end,  He  supplies  everything  that  is 
needful ;  so  that  sensation  and  thought  find,  all  along  through 
the  darkness,  their  reality  and  light  in  Him,  much  as  the  lower 
animal  world  is  helped  forward  by  instinct. 

The  case  is  quite  analogous  with  the  development  of  cona- 
tive  or  elementary  effort  into  purposive  Will.  It  seems  plain 
that  the  whole  animal  creation  below  man  cannot  be  set  down 
as  mere  machines,  without  including  man  in  the  same  purely 
mechanical  category ;  but  as  we  have  seen,  there  really  seems 
to  be  no  school  of  thought  which  holds  such  a  radical  theory. 
The  lower  order  of  animals  not  being  then  mere  machines,  con- 
scious action  must  be  attributed  to  some  of  them ;  and  if  to 
some,  then,  to  those  below  unless  a  clear  line  of  separation  can 
be  found.  But  this,  it  is  confessed,  is  impossible.  Where, 
then,  are  we  to  stop  ?  Effort  of  some  sort,  active  or  passive, 
must  be  admitted  down  to  the  protoplasmic  unit,  and  there 
seems  to  be  no  halting  place  until  we  reach  it. 

At  the  point  of  its  emergence  into  the  light  of  consciousness, 
however,  we  recognize  it  first  in  what  we  call  attention.  It 
then  begins  to  stand  out  more  and  more  distinctly  and  in  fuller 
proportions  until  at  last  we  discover  the  fact  that  the  sovereign 
principle  of  the  personality  —  the  will  —  has  quietly  seized  the 
reins  and  conscious  self-determination  has  begun. 

Not  until  now,  and  perhaps  not  for  some  time  after,  does 
the  concept  of  the  self,  clear  and  certain,  stand  out  to  he  self ; 


112  MECHANISM    AND    PERSONALITY. 

so  true  is  it  that  that  which  is  first  in  idea  and  essence,  and  for 
the  sake  of  which  all  intermediate  stages  have  value,  is  last  in 
manifestation.  The  seed  is  for  the  tree,  the  tree  for  the  bloom, 
the  bloom  for  the  fruit.  The  end  of  this  sequence  was  at  the 
beginning  in  the  seed,  unless  we  are  to  give  up  all  meaning 
whatever.  It  is  the  same  in  the  works  of  man.  Take  a  single 
illustration.  Workmen  break  up  and  drag  forth  great  masses 
of  stone  from  the  quarry ;  others  toil  at  transporting  them  to 
the  sea-shore ;  again  they  are  seized  and  carried  forth,  — 
thrown  overboard  and  sink  out  of  sight.  What  folly  to  one  not 
in  the  secret !  But  gradually  an  artificial  island  rises  above 
the  surface ;  and  on  this  a  tall  shaft  shoots  up,  and  finally  a 
blaze  of  light  streams  far  over  the  '  waste  of  waters/  a  beacon 
of  safety  to  the  mariner,  while  warning  him  of  danger.  The 
engineer  who  planned  all  this,  and  carried  it  on  through  its 
successive  stages,  saw  that  blaze  of  light  from  the  beginning ; 
and  only  in  the  reality  of  that  first  light  in  the  mind,  is  there 
reality  in  the  final  blaze  on  the  sea.  And  so  with  anything  that 
has  meaning.  And  thus  it  is  that  the  ideal  and  the  real  are 
both  beginning  and  end. 

It  is  not  until  after  this  reality  —  the  self,  both  new  and 
old  —  has,  so  to  speak,  attained  its  majority,  that  it  enters 
upon  its  distinctively  purposive  existence.  A  new  factor  has 
appeared  upon  the  stage  as  marvellous  as  consciousness  itself, 
the  power  of  self-direction  and  self-limitation ;  and  we  find 
ourselves  masters  of  our  own  movements  within  large  limits, 
mechanical  and  psychical,  imposed  by  the  Author  of  ex- 
istence. 

We  now  arrive  at  the  true  self-formative  stage  of  personal 
development.  Up  to  this  time,  the  personality  has  been  chiefly 
subject  to  the  push  and  pull  of  the  world-evolver,  and  the  work 
accomplished  has  been  the  developing  of  organs,  and  their 
functions,  for  the  true  work  to  be  done  with  them  by  the  self 
in  its  own  up-building.  While  the  mighty  power  behind  all 
phenomena  does  not  cease  to  sustain  and  propel,  now  that  It 


FUNDAMENTAL    MODES    OF    THE    SELF. — MEMORY.     113 

has  vested  the  self  with  this  highest  prerogative,  self-direction, 
It  confines  its  offices  to  those  of  the  silent  and  humble  sort, 
devolving  responsibility  on  the  self  in  the  ratio  of  its  elevation. 
The  self  enters  upon  its  newly  discovered  functions  with  full 
authority  of  self-direction,  and  a  large  province  in  which  it  has 
the  power  to  carry  its  purposes  into  effect.  Its  work  is,  in  legal 
parlance,  to  '  reduce  the  Universe  to  possession,'  building  up 
within  a  self-world  with  greater  or  less  fidelity  to  the  reality 
without  and  above  it;  refining,  strengthening,  and  enlarging 
itself  in  the  three- fold  modes  of  thought,  feeling,  and  conduct. 
The  world  known,  is  the  objectified  self;  the  self  knowing,  is 
the  subjectified  world.  The  self  can  know  nothing  of  reality 
which  has  not  in  thought  entered  into  and  become  in  so  far 
itself.  A  landscape  lies  spread  out ;  it  may  be  miles  away  :  I 
know  it  by  the  reactions  in  my  mechanism,  due  to  sensory 
changes.  On  the  other  hand,  whenever  I  try  to  think  upon 
myself,  it  is  some  phase  or  other  of  the  empirical  ego  which 
engages  my  attention,  and  so  is  in  so  far  an  element  of  the  non- 
ego. 

If  the  work  of  the  self  upon  the  material  furnished  it  in  the 
reality  without  be  well  and  faithfully  done,  the  self-world  will 
be  true ;  if  falsely  and  faithlessly  done  it  will  be  false,  and  the 
personality,  living  thus  in  a  false  environment,  must  be  itself 
false  in  one  or  other,  —  it  may  be  in  all  its  modes.  This  we 
shall  understand  better  farther  on. 

This  process  of  seizing  upon,  and  bringing  in  the  Universe, 
is  progressive  and  complicated.  It  is  partly  due  to  environ- 
ment, and  partly  the  result  of  purposive  and  self-directed 
action ;  but  the  self  in  its  highest  mode  is  guarded  by  its 
nature  against  whatever  in  environment  has  not  its  active  co- 
operation. Perception,  or  it  may  be  called  '  thing-knowledge/ 
is  forced  upon  the  self  through  external  stimuli,  and  is,  in  so 
far,  mechanical ;  but  whatever  use  the  self  makes  of  such  crude 
material  will  have  value  from  the  character  of  the  purposive 
element  which  enters  the  action. 


114  MECHANISM    AND    PERSONALITY. 

Perception,  in  its  proper  psychological  sense,  is  the  imme- 
diate knowledge  of  '  thing  '  now,  and  here  present  as  a  stimulus 
to  psychical  action,  — '  thing '  being  taken  in  its  largest  sense. 
1  Perception'  is  often  used  loosely,  to  embrace  any  notion 
in  the  mind,  whatever  be  the  content ;  as  when  one  says  one 
perceives  (comprehends)  the  truth  of  a  mathematical  prop- 
osition; perceives  (understands)  the  excellence  of  a  method, 
or  the  advantage  of  a  particular  course  of  action.  Perception 
in  the  stricter  sense  must  have  an  objective  reality  as  its  con- 
tent. An  event  may  be  the  object  of  a  perception,  but  in 
strictness  it  is  not  the  event  itself,  but  the  mechanical  element 
is  the  necessary  factor,  and  it  is  for  this  reason  that  it  is  so 
largely  forced  upon  the  self  by  environment.  The  perceived- 
world  is  just  as  much  of  actuality  as  is  present  to  conscious- 
ness, through  the  action  of  stimuli,  at  the  moment  of  such 
action. 

It  is  not  our  object  to  discuss  problems,  and  therefore  it  is 
not  necessary  to  enter  upon  the  many  phases  presented  by 
different  theories  of  perception.  Whether  an  object  is  seen 
immediately,  i.e.  seen  face  to  face,  and  in  its  own  right ;  or, 
mediately,  i.e.  through  the  agency  of  something  not  the  object 
perceived,  has  engaged  the  earnest  inquiry  of  philosophers  in 
the  past.  In  our  view  of  the  case,  it  is  either,  or  both,  as  the 
inquiry  is  presented.  It  is  to  be  remembered  that  the  body 
is  not  the  self,  nor  are  the  nerves,  and  nerve-centres,  nor  the 
whole  of  the  personal  mechanism,  what  I  know  in  conscious- 
ness as  '  me.'  The  self  is  not  shut  up  in  the  brain,  nor  is  there 
any  power  to  find,  or  to  conceive  of  where  it  is,  or  what  it  is. 
With  this  carefully  in  mind  it  seems  a  rather  barren  question 
to  ask  whether  the  self  knows  any  particular  object,  as  a  tree, 
or  is  only  told  about  it  by  something  else.  The  only  knowing 
that  is  done  in  the  case,  is  done  by  the  self,  for  certainly 
neither  the  nerves,  nor  the  air,  nor  the  luminiferous  ether 
know  anything  about  it;  and  can  tell  nothing.  Again,  what 


FUNDAMENTAL    MODES    OF   THE   SELF.  MEMORY.     I  1 5 

is  the  tree  to  be  known?  Of  course  the  phenomenal  tree. 
Nobody  contends  that  we  can  know  the  de-phenomenalized  or 
essential  tree.  Now  where  are  phenomena  known  ?  at  the  end- 
organs  of  the  fingers,  or  the  retina  of  the  eye,  —  or  at  the  tip 
of  the  tongue  ?  Surely  not ;  nor  yet  at  the  nerve-centres. 
Knowledge  is  in,  and  through,  all  these,  however,  and  when- 
ever they  may  be  stimulated ;  and  all  knowledge  is  in  the  self, 
and  not  at  the  tree  nor  anywhere.  It  has  no  space  form ; 
and  so  the  question  as  to  representation  or  immediate  per- 
ception has  really  no  substantial  meaning.  All  we  know,  or 
ever  can  know,  about  an  object  is  a  concept  of  the  object  of 
greater  or  less  fidelity  to  the  externally  subsisting  truth ;  and 
just  as  this  knowledge  becomes  fuller  and  more  accurate,  the 
self  has  reduced  more  and  more  truth  of  the  Universe  to 
possession. 

When  it  is  contended  that  we  see  the  very  tree  itself,  we 
say,  indeed  we  do.  We  see  just  that  which  the  tree  was 
designed  to  show  forth  in  color,  and  in  every  other  way  of 
appeal  to  us.  We  have  no  thought  of  any  agencies  or  inter- 
mediations. We  are  directly  conscious  of  the  only  sort  of 
tree  there  is  for  us,  —  that  of  which  we  have  a  notion  in  the 
mind,  and  project  as  a  necessary  part  of  that  notion  in  space, 
just  at  that  place,  and  in  just  so  much  of  it,  as  is  in  that  notion. 
If  it  be  said,  But  we  may  be  mistaken ;  and  may  find  that  the 
actual  tree,  and  our  concept  of  the  tree,  do  not  agree,  such 
an  objection  arises  from  the  failure  to  take  in  rightly  what  the 
relation  between  the  concept  and  the  actual  tree  really  is.  The 
concept  is  not  necessarily,  perhaps  never  is  perfectly  true  to 
the  object ;  but  it  is  at  any  moment  exactly  what  we  see  and 
know  of  the  object  at  that  moment.  It  may  be  mended  a 
moment  after,  and  then  we  shall  have  a  juster  look  at  the  tree ; 
but  this  in  no  wise  affects  the  reality  of  our  first  look.  It 
would  be  quite  as  reasonable  for  one  looking  at  an  object 
through  an  ill-adjusted  telescope  to  say  he  was  not  looking  at 


I  l6  MECHANISM    AND    PERSONALITY. 

the  object  at  all,  because  the  next  minute,  by  better  adjust- 
ment, he  could  see  the  object  more  clearly. 

It  may  be  well  to  caution  the  reader  against  the  notion  that 
the  concept  of  an  object  is  in  any  manner  like  the  object- — 
like  in  a  pictorial  sense.  If  one  could  look  into  the  mind  of 
another  with  every  possible  degree  of  refinement  in  detail,  we 
should  see  no  set  of  little  pictures  or  images ;  nor  anything 
more  resembling  the  objects  of  sense  without,  than  the  written 
characters  which  tell  me  of  my  friend's  good  fortune  are  like 
my  friend,  or  the  event.  These  are  in  the  mind  signs,  or 
whatever  else  they  may  be  called,  which  the  self  can  spread 
out  into  a  picture,  or  a  truth,  but  likeness  there  certainly  is 
none. 

Now,  how  it  is  that  the  concept  of  externality  or  '  outness ' 
arises  in  the  mind  in  the  beginning  does  not  much  concern  us 
to  inquire,  except  perhaps  as  a  curious  question.  It  has  been 
much  discussed,  and  there  are  some  difficulties  about  it  in  a 
philosophical  sense ;  but  none  whatever  in  a  practical  way. 
One  pushes  out  the  hand  originally  because,  perhaps,  one  is 
alive.  It  does  not  seem  that  any  great  difficulty  should  be 
felt  that  a  living  organism  moves.  This  means  change  of 
place  in  whole  or  part,  and  room  for  movement ;  so  that  there 
is  no  lack  of  material  out  of  which  to  build  up  the  concept  of 
space.  Whether  motion  alone  with  the  sense  of  touch  would 
give  rise  to  any  right  notion  of  form  and  figure  has  been  vigor- 
ously disputed ;  but  with  the  sense  of  sight  superadded,  the 
practical  result  is  clear ;  and  that  is  sufficient  for  our  purposes. 

Space  is  thus  a  necessary  element  of  perception.  Since  a 
perception  must  be  of  an  object  or  event  now  present,  Time 
enters  as  a  necessary  factor.  We  do  not  now  open  the  inquiry 
as  to  what  time  is ;  but  in  its  empirical  aspects  it  presents 
difficulties  enough.  Like  space,  there  are  no  practical  diffi- 
culties, for  we  know  all  about  Time,  as  St.  Augustine  has  said 
long  ago,  if  we  do  not  attempt  to  explain.  But  when  we  say 


FUNDAMENTAL    MODES    OF    THE    SELF.  MEMORY.     I  I/ 

'  now  present,'  it  may  reasonably  be  asked  what  we  mean  by 
now ;  and  the  answer  is  not  quite  obvious.  We  may  say  that 
we  mean  to  exclude  the  past,  and  not  to  include  the  future. 
But  what  is  left  when  these  are  gone  ?  The  past  claims  the 
second  or  the  least  portion  of  the  second  which  was  just  here, 
and  the  future  will  not  lend  the  present  the  most  infinitesimal 
part  of  a  second  which  has  not  yet  arrived  ;  so  that  the  present 
is  reduced  to  zero,  or  at  most  to  a  mathematical  line  without 
breadth,  separating  the  past  from  the  future.  The  past 
moment  has  vanished,  the  present  is  without  duration,  and  the 
future  certainly  is  not  yet.  But  for  all  that  the  present  is  a  very 
real  somewhat,  —  perhaps  in  strictness  the  only  time-reality. 
Indeed,  whatever  is  above  the  threshold  of  cognition  is  now 
present,  and  continues  to  be  the  present  as  long  as  it  continues 
within  the  illuminated  circle  of  consciousness.  The  change 
which  takes  place  in  this  field  of  view  is  what  we  call  succes- 
sion. Time  can  hardly  be  said  to  have  length,  except  in  a 
borrowed  sense,  since  length  is  a  dimension,  and  belongs  to 
space,  and  time  and  space  are  incommensurate. 

But  do  we  not  know  the  past?  Certainly ;  but  whatever  we 
know  of  it  is  present.  All  the  past  there  is  for  us,  —  that  is  to 
say,  all  that  we  do  know,  or  ever  shall  know,  of  what  was  once 
within  the  sphere  of  consciousness  must  come  again  within 
that  sphere,  and  be  present  once  more,  before  it  can  be  known. 
The  past  is  the  present  knowledge  of  psychical  conditions 
already  experienced  ;  the  future  is  the  present  knowledge  of 
psychical  conditions  in  anticipation  of  experiences  to  come. 

That  power  or  instrumentality  which  is  charged  with  the 
office  of  bringing  past  acts  of  consciousness  back  once  more 
to  the  present  is  called  memory.  We  have  seen  it  all  along  in 
a  humble  sphere,  where  it  was  called  '  retention.'  It  is  no  new 
thing,  but  has  now  passed  from  its  inchoate  form,  and  entered 
upon  its  time  office  within  the  illuminated  circle  of  conscious- 
ness. It  had  to  be,  in  some  rudimentary  form  in  the  earliest 


Il8  MECHANISM   AND    PERSONALITY. 

manifestations  of  animated  nature,  existing  far  below  the  line 
of  consciousness,  —  perhaps  even  in  the  elementary  protoplas- 
mic mass,  —  in  order  that  any  sort  of  unity  might  obtain  among 
the  varying  phases  of  the  several  life-modes.  Retention,  thus, 
is,  so  far  as  we  know,  simple  and  fundamental,  while  memory 
is  complex  and  highly  specialized,  retaining  its  original  biologi- 
cal character,  but  with  a  psychic  factor  superadded  which  quite 
transforms  and  sublimates  it.  In  its  rudimentary  form  its 
office  is  to  retain  or  link  together  the  states  and  activities  of 
the  living  organism ;  in  its  psychic  form  to  preserve  the  conti- 
nuity of  the  acts  of  consciousness.  Thus  it  does  not  simply 
conserve  the  individual  facts  once  present  to  the  mind  as  so 
many  units.  It  is  the  concept-continuum  or  plexus  of  the 
conscious  personality.  It  is  the  unifying  bond  of  the  empirical 
ego,  which  is  constantly  undergoing  change,  precisely  as  in  the 
process  of  apperception.  What  we  know  of  a  thing  at  any 
moment  —  which  is  only  another  way  of  saying,  what  we  are 
at  any  moment  with  respect  to  the  thing  —  that  the  memory 
preserves  to  us.  As  this  knowledge  is  made  up  of  many  ele- 
ments superposed  and  blended  into  a  complex  whole,  so  with 
memory.  Any  special  deliverance  of  memory  may  be  com- 
pared to  the  composite  effect  produced  by  superposing  many 
faces  upon  one  photographic  plate.  Each  individual  leaves  its 
effect  behind,  but  is  modified  by  each  in  turn.  The  first  glance 
of  any  object  gives  rise  to  some  modification  of  the  psychical 
mechanism.  The  next  changes  or  fills  out  the  first,  and  so  on 
through  any  number  of  observations,  or  through  one  entire  and 
continuous  scrutiny.  No  two  observations  —  no  two  consecu- 
tive reactions  of  the  psychical  cells  are  precisely  the  same  in 
perception,  but  all  blend  into  each  other,  giving  rise  to  greater 
distinctness  at  some  points,  and  less  at  others  ;  and  this  change 
continues  indefinitely,  though  becoming  more  and  more  stable 
by  persistence.  This  marvellous  composite  effect  in  percep- 
tion and  in  thought  is  committed  to  the  keeping  of  memory. 


FUNDAMENTAL    MODES    OF    THE    SELF. MEMORY.     I IQ 

It  is  thus  the  nexus  of  the  empirical  ego,  and  gives  stability  to 
each  modified  concept,  maintaining  the  continuity  between 
successive  acts  of  knowledge. 

Now,  happily  memory  does  not  force  upon  us  all  at  once, 
and  all  the  time,  what  it  is  ready  enough  to  present,  or  rather 
represent ;  nor  is  it  so  officious  as  to  retain  at  all,  in  any  dis- 
tinct form,  much  of  what  was  once  in  consciousness.  Life  would 
indeed  be  intolerable  if  one  could  forget  nothing.  In  one 
sense,  there  is  nothing  forgotten,  —  that  is  to  say,  every  psy- 
chical energy  is,  doubtless,  gathered  up  in  the  composite  con- 
cept ;  but  in  the  blending  process  much  is  forgotten  and  lost 
to  consciousness. 

The  physiology  of  memory  has  been  earnestly  discussed,  and 
the  reasons  presented  for  holding  that  it  has  a  mechanical  basis 
in  cerebral  action  are  exceedingly  strong,  —  indeed,  too  strong 
to  admit  of  successful  refutation.  The  metaphysicians,  as  a 
rule,  have  set  themselves  against  the  physiologists  in  this  regard ; 
but,  it  should  seem,  the  contest  is  unequal,  and  the  point  not 
worth  contending  for.  No  one  in  these  days  pretends  to  deny 
that  the  brain-cells  play  an  important  part  in  sense-perception, 
or  the  '  presentative '  power ;  and  this  conceded,  it  is  hopeless, 
even  if  there  were  any  point  to  be  saved,  to  deny  them  some 
part  also  in  the  '  representative  '  power. 

The  difficulty  urged  by  Lotze,  namely,  that  the  reactions 
of  the  cerebral  centres  are  infinitely  varied  in  every  act  of 
perception,  as  when  "we  see  some  one  approaching,  every 
step  nearer  he  comes,  the  image  on  our  retina  assumes  larger 
dimensions ;  hardly  one  point  of  the  whole  figure  answers  at 
any  one  moment  to  the  same  spot  of  the  eye  as  at  the  moment 
before ;  not  one  after-image,  but  numberless  images  all  dif- 
ferent one  from  another  would  remain,  if  our  nervous  organs 
fixed  every  momentary  impression  in  permanent  traces,"  seems 
to  tell  just  as  heavily  against  the  power  of  the  self  to  read  at 
any  moment  a  definite  perception  into  this  '  agglomeration '  of 


I2O  MECHANISM    AND    PERSONALITY. 

brain-action  —  a  position  he  seems  to  accept  without  question 

—  as  against  its  being  able  to  do  the  same  thing  in  the  after- 
effects of  these  same  signs.     That  motion,  however  infinitesi- 
mal, when  communicated  to  masses,  must  by  the  principle  of 
inertia  continue  until  dissipated,  or  converted  into  some  other 
form  of  energy,  is  too  well  established  in  molecular  physics  to 
be  easily  shaken ;  so  that  it  seems  impossible  to  dispose  of  the 
brain-states  instantly  at  least ;  and  if  they  continue  for  one 
instant  after  the  action  of  the  stimulus  is  withdrawn,  why  not 
for  the  next ;  and  where  shall  a  limit  be  found  ?     And  if  they 
continue  at  all,  there  seems  no  earthly  reason  that  they  should 
not  be  intelligible,  just  so  long,  and  in  such  degree,  as  they 
continue  to  subsist. 

The  objection  on  account  of  their  complexity  is  one  that 
may  well  stagger  us ;  but  science  has  already  made  such  de- 
mands upon  our  credulity  in  this  regard,  that  it  is  now  too  late 
to  halt  upon  a  mere  question  of  degree.  Take,  for  example, 
that  experiment  in  sound,  given  already  upon  the  authority  of 
Dr.  Tyndall,  in  which  a  piano,  two  floors  below  trie  lecture- 
room,  sends  up  its  vibration  by  means  of  a  rod  resting  on  the 
sounding-board.  Reflect  upon  the  fact  that  each  of  the  wires 
struck  has  upon  it,  in  addition  to  its  fundamental  swing,  a 
multitude  of  superposed  vibrations,  or  over- tones,  —  that  the 
sounding-board  has  to  break  up  into  an  infinite  number  of 
vibrating  segments  with  fixed  nodal  lines  between,  in  order  to 
respond  to  each  of  the  strings  and  their  innumerable  '  partials,' 

—  that  somehow  these   all,  without   losing  their  independent 
existence,  have  to  find  their  way  to  the  sharpened  end  of  the 
rod,  and  then  interlace  or  pack  themselves  together  without 
loss  or  confusion,  so  as  to  accommodate  themselves  to  the  quite 
different  form  of  the  rod,  and  then  spread  out  over  the  reso- 
nating body  at  the  upper  end,  —  itself  repeating  under  changed 
conditions  the  complexity  of  the  sounding-board,  and  then  on 
through  the  air  to  the  still  more  marvellous  mechanism  of  the 


FUNDAMENTAL    MODES    OF    THE    SELF.  MEMORY.     121 

ear,  —  what  room  is  there,  in  the  light  of  such  bewildering 
complexity,  to  stand  out  upon  the  ground  of  mechanical  diffi- 
culties !  But  all  this,  we  have  every  reason  to  think,  is  but  the 
beginning  of  the  intricacies  of  motion  in  nature,  when  we  con- 
sider the  demand  made  upon  us  in  molecular  physics. 

In  the  phonograph  we  have  what  seems  to  answer  in  a 
remarkable  way  to  what  is  supposed  to  be  the  action  of  the 
nerve-cells  in  the  case  of  memory.  In  it,  the  amazing  fact 
confronts  us  that  the  human  voice  can  be,  so  to  speak,  wrought 
into  a  waxy  composition  in  a  jagged  line  plowed  by  the  point 
of  a  stylus  in  such  wise  that  the  infinitesimal  variations  of  the 
impressions,  upon  reversing  the  process,  give  back  the  words 
with  the  tone,  accent,  and  timbre  imparted  to  them  by  the 
voice  !  One  feels,  notwithstanding  the  evidence  of  eye  and 
ear,  that  it  must  be  some  unread  page  of  the  Arabian  Nights' 
Entertainment,  so  far  is  it  beyond  the  powers  of  the  under- 
standing ;  and  yet  all  this,  for  delicacy  and  rapidity  of  move- 
ment, stands  untold  degrees  below  the  phenomena  of  light, 
heat,  and  electricity ;  and  who  shall  say  how  far  these  in  turn 
are  removed  from  the  possible  refinement  of  motion  in  gravita- 
tion, chemical  affinity,  and  vital  action  ! 

We  cannot  stop  to  bring  together  in  any  detail  the  physio- 
logical reasons  for  holding  that  the  brain,  somehow,  retains  in 
its  molecular  structure  the  signs  of  past  cognitions,  but  it  will 
be  well  to  mention  some  of  the  many  phenomena  which  find 
explanation  upon  this  hypothesis. 

First,  injury  to,  or  the  removal  of  certain  areas  of  the  brain, 
as  we  have  seen,  cuts  off  all  recollection  of  objects  previously 
known,  as  in  the  case  of  an  animal  when  food  is  presented. 
The  power  of  perception  is,  of  course,  involved ;  but  it  will  be 
remembered  that  memory  is  absolutely  necessary  to  any  act  of 
perception.  Besides,  there  are  many  cases  on  record  of  people 
who  have  received  injuries  of  a  special  area  of  the  brain,  who, 
although  they  continued  to  understand  perfectly  what  they 


122  MECHANISM    AND    PERSONALITY. 

wanted  to  say,  had  lost  the  recollection  of  the  proper  word  or 
words  necessary  to  convey  their  meaning.  The  connection 
between  thought  and  language  is  very  extraordinary.  Dr. 
Abercrombie  mentions  the  case  of  a  man  who  had  lost  the 
knowledge  of  spoken  names,  though  he  knew  them  well  enough 
if  written ;  and,  retaining  the  sound  of  such  a  word  in  his  mind, 
upon  looking  in  a  list  containing  the  word,  when  his  eye  fell 
upon  it,  would  recognize  it  at  once.  In  cases  of  the  softening 
of  the  brain,  and  in  the  cerebral  changes  due  to  old  age,  memory 
is  greatly  affected ;  sometimes  almost  wholly  lost. 

There  are  many  other  phenomena  which  find  their  only 
scientific  explanation  in  impeded  or  peculiarly  excited  cerebral 
action.  For  example,  the  well-known  case  of  the  student  in 
Philadelphia,  reported  by  Dr.  Rush,  who,  on  recovering  from  a 
fever,  had  lost  all  his  acquired  knowledge.  "  When  his  health 
was  restored,  he  began  to  apply  himself  to  the  Latin  grammar, 
had  passed  through  the  elementary  parts,  and  was  beginning  to 
construe,  when,  one  day,  in  making  a  strong  effort  to  recollect 
a  part  of  his  lesson,  the  whole  of  his  lost  impressions  suddenly 
returned  to  his  mind  " ;  due  doubtless  to  the  removal  or  ab- 
sorption of  some  stoppage  in  blood  circulation. 

Dr.  Carpenter  gives  an  account  of  an  old  Welshman,  who", 
separated  from  all  who  spoke  Welsh  for  fifty  years,  found  him- 
self entirely  unable  to  understand  his  relatives,  who,  on  a  visit 
to  him,  spoke  in  their  mother-tongue  ;  but  in  an  attack  of  fever 
when  past  seventy,  he  talked  Welsh  fluently.  Cases  not  unlike 
this  are  quite  common. 

The  most  extraordinary  case  of  this  sort  is  given  on  the  author- 
ity of  Coleridge.  In  a  town  in  Germany,  a  young  woman,  who 
could  neither  read  nor  write,  was  seized  with  a  fever,  and  be- 
gan to  talk  in  Latin,  Greek,  and  Hebrew.  'Whole  sheets  of 
her  ravings  were  written  out,  and  found  to  consist  of  sentences 
intelligible  each  for  itself,  but  with  little  or  no  connection  with 
each  other.  Of  the  Hebrew,  a  small  portion  only  could  be 


FUNDAMENTAL    MODES    OF    THE    SELF.  MEMORY.      123 

traced  to  the  Bible ;  the  remainder  seemed  to  be  in  the  Rab- 
binical dialect.  All  trick  or  conspiracy  was  out  of  the  question. 
Not  only  had  the  young  woman  ever  been  a  harmless,  simple 
creature,  but  she  was  evidently  laboring  under  a  nervous  fever.' 
The  case  was  followed  up  by  a  young  physician,  who  succeeded 
in  finding  that  at  about  nine  years  of  age  she  had  been  living 
in  the  family  of  a  learned  Protestant  pastor,  who  had  had  the 
habit  of  walking  up  and  down  a  passage  of  the  house  which 
opened  into  the  kitchen,  reading  in  a  loud  voice  out  of  his 
favorite  books.  A  considerable  number  of  these  books  were 
still  in  the  possession  of  the  old  scholar's  niece,  who  said  '  he 
was  a  very  learned  man,  and  a  great  Hebraist.'  Among  the 
books  were  found  a  collection  of  Rabbinical  writings,  together 
with  several  Greek  and  Latin  Fathers ;  and  the  physician  suc- 
ceeded in  identifying  so  many  passages  with  those  taken  down 
at  the  young  woman's  bedside,  that  no  doubt  could  remain  in 
any  rational  mind  concerning  the  true  origin  of  the  impressions 
made  on  her  nervous  system.  Coleridge  adds,  '  This  authenti- 
cated case  furnishes  both  proof  and  instance,  that  reliques  of 
sensation  may  exist  for  an  indefinite  time  in  a  latent  state, 
in  the  very  same  order  in  which  they  were  originally  impressed.' 
This  hypothesis  of  a  measurably  permanent  molecular  arrange- 
ment of  the  cerebrum,  as  a  basis  of  memory,  seems,  in  some 
sort  at  least,  to  explain  certain  well-known  phenomena  of  every- 
day experience.  Every  one  has  the  power  of  overhauling  his 
own  knowledge  in  great  degree  at  will ;  that  is,  of  bringing 
back  into  consciousness  what  was  once  present  in  thought,  but 
is  now  out  of  the  field  of  view.  This  is  commonly  called  the 
power  of  '  recollection '  or  '  reminiscence,'  it  being  accom- 
plished by  a  conscious  effort  of  volition.  If  the  physical  signs 
of  all  such  past  acts  of  consciousness  be  still  dormant  in  the 
brain,  it  only  needs  that  they  be  revived  to  be  re-read  by  the 
conscious  self,  and  this  may  very  well  be  effected  by  a  reflex 
brain  action,  which  sends  (say)  the  ever  varying  blood-tides 


124  MECHANISM    AND    PERSONALITY. 

through  the  areas  in  which  the  molecular  dispositions  lie  inac- 
tive, causing  them  to  stand  out,  so  to  speak,  like  certain  invisi- 
ble inks,  which,  by  the  action  of  a  liquid  or  heat,  have  their 
molecular  arrangement  so  revivified  as  to  render  the  dominant 
words  distinctly  visible.  As  to  how  the  will  acts  to  find  the 
desired  area,  there  seems  to  be  no  more  difficulty  than  there  is 
to  explain  how  it  is  that  it  manages  to  find  certain  muscles  of 
the  body  in  speech  and  locomotion.  One  does  not  know  in 
consciousness  a  single  nerve  or  muscle  of  the  many  called 
into  action  to  crook  one's  little  finger,  and  yet  it  is  no  sooner 
thought  upon  than  done.  There  seems  to  be  no  good  reason 
why  some  analogous  reflex  mechanism  may  not  exist  to  govern 
past  knowledge.  It  is,  perhaps,  but  a  reverse  action  of  the 
'  inhibitory '  mechanism. 

This  purposive  power  to  recall  past  concepts  enables  one  to 
wander  back  into  past  scenes  and  l  fight  one's  battles  o'er ' ; 
but  its  work  is  immediate  and  constant.  It  is  necessary  in 
every  act  and  in  every  concept,  for  it  is  needed  to  recall  the 
mental  state  of  a  moment  ago,  as  much  as  years  gone.  It  is 
absolutely  necessary  in  every  act  of  perception,  for,  since  per- 
ception is  not  a  single  sensation,  but  a  composite  of  many,  this 
purposive  memory  must  bring  the  divers  elements  together. 
This  is  of  itself  reason  enough  to  establish  the  fact  that  memory 
has  a  physical  basis,  so  long  as  such  basis  is  granted  at  all  in 
any  psychic  phenomenon. 

Again,  it  is  well  known  that  at  the  most  unexpected  moment, 
and  without  any  sort  of  conscious  volition,  the  memory  of 
something  long  out  of  the  field  of  consciousness  suddenly 
appears  once  more.  Very  often  the  recollection  seems  to  stand 
alone ;  that  is,  out  of  any  train  of  preceding  ideas ;  but  once 
present,  it  is  clearly  seen  to  connect  itself  with  other  memories 
as  old  as  itself.  Then,  again,  everybody  knows  that  thoughts 
and  memories  are  often  forced  upon  one,  especially  when  one 
wants  to  lose  one's  self  in  sleep,  and  cannot,  or  when  there  is  a 


FUNDAMENTAL    MODES    OF   THE    SELF. MEMORY.      125 

subject  which  one  wants  especially  to  keep  out  of  mind.  The 
theory  of  a  physiological  basis  affords  a  sufficient  explanation 
of  these  phenomena,  since  it  is  only  necessary  to  assume  that 
latent  molecular  arrangements  are  quickened  into  renewed 
activity  by  brain-stimulation  of  one  sort  or  another. 

Great  stress  has  been  laid  upon  what  is  called  the  "  Law 
of  Association,"  and  the  Empirical  school  of  thought,  from 
Hobbes  to  Spencer,  attempts  to  explain  by  it  the  whole  world 
of  mental  phenomena.  It  is  by  no  means  modern,  but  it  has 
been  enormously  elaborated  in  these  last  years.  The  law  may 
be  stated  somewhat  as  follows :  Ideas  or  notions  in  the  mind 
never  stand  isolated  or  single,  and  the  presence  of  any  one 
has  a  tendency  to  call  up  any  other  of  the  group  to  which  it 
belongs.  This  seems  an  obvious  and  natural  truth  in  view 
of  the  facts,  as  they  have  presented  themselves  to  us,  in  the 
knowledge-forming  and  knowledge-conserving  process.  Asso- 
ciation seems  nothing  more  than  the  continuity  of  the  empiri- 
cal ego,  with  the  brain-mechanism  as  its  physical  basis. 


126  MECHANISM   AND    PERSONALITY. 


CHAPTER  XIII. 

THE   IMAGINATION. 

Definition.  Classification.  Cognitive  and  Sentient  Imagination.  Eco- 
nomic and  Rational  Imagination.  Artistic  and  Rhythmic.  Music.  Rela- 
tion of  Memory  and  Imagination. 

THE  memory  has  no  power  to  carry  us  back  actually  into 
the  past,  though  it  deals  exclusively  with  acts  of  past 
consciousness,  that  is,  with  whatever  now  remains  in  the  self 
of  such  previously  excited  activities.  It  projects  these  back 
into  what  we  call  time  past,  just  as  perception  in  time  present 
projects  its  presentations  into  space. 

Now  the  notion  of  past  time  carries  with  it,  necessarily,  as  a 
negation,  time  to  come  or  the  future.  The  present  is  the  meet- 
ing-place of  the  past  and  future ;  or  perhaps  better,  they  are 
but  negations  or  limits  on  either  hand  of  the  present. 

As  memory  is  an  activity  or  power  of  the  self  which  deals 
with  what  has  been,  so  there  must  be  some  activity  which  shall 
concern  itself  with  what  may  be.  The  manifestation  of  this 
energy  of  the  self  is  what  we  call  the  Imagination.  It  may  be 
defined  to  be  that  power  of  the  self  through  which  past  con- 
cepts, so  modified  and  combined  as  to  present  some  new  and 
original  element,  are  made  to  stand  out  with  more  or  less  vivid- 
ness as  objects  of  thought.  If  past  scenes  are  returned  to 
thought  simply  as  they  were  (if  that  be  possible),  it  is  an  act 
of  memory ;  but  as  there  is  always  some  modification  or  change 
in  the  re-presentation  of  mental  states,  the  imagination  plays 
a  large  part  in  what  is  commonly  set  down  as  the  unaided  work 
of  memory.  Indeed,  the  functions  of  the  imagination  embrace 


THE    IMAGINATION. 


127 


the  whole  scope  of  mental  action.  Whatever  is  thought  out  as 
an  end,  in  any  sense,  is  new ;  and  must  find  its  place  in  the 
sphere  of  the  possible  —  the  '  becoming.'  It  cannot  be  memory 
which  carries  the  self  on  towards  and  into  that  which  is  not  yet 
actual,  but  only  possible  or  beginning  to  be.  This  is  the  work 
of  the  Imagination.  Its  importance  can  hardly  be  exaggerated. 
There  is  considerable  difference  of  opinion  as  to  the  proper 
classification  of  the  several  domains  of  this  power.  It  should 
seem  that  a  scientific  classification  would  be  according  to  the 
following  scheme  :  — 

SCHEME  OF  IMAGINATION. 


Economic    =  Causality  =  Understanding  =  Utility. 


1 


Rational      =  Causality  =  Pure  Reason       =  Truth. 


Artistic        =     Space 


o 
O 

Rhythmic    =    Time 


1 

=        Vision      =    - 
.9 

=         Hearing  =    • 

f  Painting. 
<    Sculpture. 
(  Architecture. 

1   ' 

(  Poetry. 
(  Music. 

By  the  grand  division  into  '  Cognitive  '  and  '  Sentient '  Im- 
agination, we  cover  the  two  classes  which  embrace  all  Knowl- 
edge, Intellect  and  Feeling. 

The  '  Cognitive  '  Imagination  breaks  up  into  two  sub-divis- 
ions, one  with  causality  as  its  ground,  the  understanding  as  its 
proper  area,  and  utility  as  its  end.  It  may  be  called,  there- 


128  MECHANISM    AND    PERSONALITY. 

fore,  the  '  Economic '  Imagination.  The  other  has  causality 
for  its  ground,  the  '  pure  reason '  for  its  area,  and  truth  for  its 
end.  It  may  be  called  the  '  Rational '  Imagination. 

The  <  Sentient '  Imagination  also  breaks  up  into  two  sub- 
divisions :  first,  the  '  Artistic,'  with  space  as  its  ground,  vision 
for  its  domain,  and  painting,  sculpture,  and  architecture  as  its 
ends ;  second,  the  '  Rhythmic '  Imagination,  with  time  as  its 
ground,  the  sense  of  hearing  for  its  domain,  with  poetry  and 
music  as  its  ends. 

Under  the  '  Economic '  Imagination  we  class  all  those  activi- 
ties of  this  power  which  have  the  useful  in  any  form  for  their 
object.  It  embraces  the  widest  possible  range,  starting  from 
the  level  of  '  every- day's  most  quiet  need,'  and  rising  to  the 
highest  possible  pitch  of  inventive  genius.  The  whole  world 
of  mechanical  contrivances  are  its  products.  Any  man  who 
proceeds  to  do  a  new  thing,  —  new  not  as  unlike  what  has 
been  done  before  by  others,  or  even  by  himself,  but  new  in 
that  he  is  striving  to  cause  that  to  be  which  otherwise  would 
never  come  into  being,  is  exercising  a  power  which  transcends 
the  sphere  of  the  actual  and  deals  with  the  possible.  Thus 
the  savage  who  puts  together  two  fagots  to  start  a  fire,  or 
sharpens  a  stick  for  a  plough,  is  an  inventor,  and  in  so  far 
exercises  the  economic  imagination.  Every  make-shift,  short- 
cut, or  contrivance  has  an  element  of  originality  in  it,  and  is  a 
protrusion  into  the  future,  making  that  actual  which  before  was 
only  possible.  The  construction  of  any  sentence  is  an  inven- 
tion. Even  if  the  thought  be  not  new,  there  must  be  an 
arrangement  of  words  and  sentences  which  is  new  at  least  to 
the  thinker,  and  the  power  which  leads  to  this  arrangement  is 
neither  that  which  discovers  the  actual  to  sense-perception,  nor 
brings  back  the  past  in  memory.  It  is  a  movement  which 
peers  into  the  future,  and  strives  to  evolve  reality  from  the 
potential.  The  economic  imagination  has  the  useful  in  its 
various  forms  for  its  characteristic,  —  the  useful  in  its  broadest 


THE    IMAGINATION. 

sense ;  so  that  all  domestic,  social,  and  political  aspects  of  life 
in  their  practical  applications,  must  depend  upon  this  tran- 
scendent power  of  the  personality  as  a  necessary  factor. 

There  is  still  another  phase  of  mental  effort,  the  broadest 
of  all  in  its  sweep,  which,  it  should  seem,  must  find  its  place 
under  the  economic  imagination,  and  that  is  the  concept-form- 
ing process.  The  philosophic  world  has  rung  with  controver- 
sies as  to  what  the  content  of  a  concept  really  is,  but  without 
entering  the  arena  which  has  witnessed  such  valiant  feats  be- 
tween Realist  and  Nominalist,  we  may  venture  to  affirm  that 
there  is  always  some  sort  of  shadowy  and  plastic  image  floating 
in  the  mind  when  a  general  term,  such  as  <  man,'  '  house,'  or 
'  horse '  is  used,  and  that  there  is  an  element  of  originality  in 
its  structure.  It  is  now  pretty  well  agreed  that  there  is  no 
specific  reality  answering  to  such  an  abstract  notion,  and  that 
it  can  have  no  proper  image  or  simulacrum,  but  the  power 
through  which  it  gains  whatever  belongs  to  it,  must  fall  under 
the  head  of  the  imagination  in  its  sphere  of  use  and  necessity. 

What  we  call  the  '  Rational  Imagination,'  is  that  mental 
capacity  through  which  the  evolution  of  truth  as  truth  is 
evolved,  and  is  founded  —  as  we  shall  see  all  thought  must 
be  —  in  the  fundamental  pre- suppositions  of  what  is  called  the 
Pure  Reason.  Here  we  have  no  longer  the  mere  practical  end 
which  characterizes  the  economic  imagination,  but  the  motive 
and  object  is  the  evolution  of  truth,  as  truth.  This  is  the  do- 
main of  the  mathematician,  logician,  physicist,  theologian,  and 
philosopher  of  every  name.  Every  man  is  compelled  to  phil- 
osophize in  some  degree,  ranging  from  cogency  to  fatuity,  and 
so  to  every  man  must  be  conceded  some  degree  of  Rational 
Imagination. 

There  is  one  phase  of  this  power  much  spoken  of,  but  which 
differs  in  no  essential  particular  from  any  other  phase  of  the 
rational  imagination,  and  that  is  what  is  called  the  '  Scientific 
Imagination.'  That  this  power  is  necessary  in  any  real  work 


I3O  MECHANISM    AND    PERSONALITY. 

in  science  is  too  obvious  to  admit  of  question.  D'Alembert 
said  long  ago  that,  to  the  geometer  who  invents,  the  imagi- 
nation is  not  less  essential  than  to  the  poet  who  creates.  All 
hypotheses  and  theories  are  exemplifications  of  this  constructive 
and  original  power.  Illustrations  could  be  drawn  from  every 
department  of  science,  and  from  the  humblest  to  the  highest 
worker.  Perhaps  the  most  famous  example  is  to  be  found  in 
Kepler,  who,  by  the  power  of  a  well-directed  imagination, 
guessed  out  the  primary  laws  of  the  solar  system. 

There  might  well  be  made  many  sub-divisions  of  the  Rational 
Imagination,  as  well  as  of  the  Economic,  but  it  is  not  neces- 
sary for  the  purposes  in  hand.  It  goes  without  saying,  also, 
that  numerous  cross- divisions  would  be  necessary  to  make  this 
proposed  scheme  exhaustive.  Indeed,  it  must  be  understood 
that  the  different  phases  of  the  imagination  must  overlap  each 
other,  and  be  variously  combined ;  as,  for  example,  in  the 
drama,  we  have  both  the  artistic  and  rhythmic  phases  distinctly 
marked.  But  we  cannot  dwell  upon  this. 

The  second  great  division  of  this  original  power  which  we 
call  the  '  Sentient  Imagination,'  covers  the  domain  of  what  is 
commonly  called  Esthetics.  It  also  breaks  up  into  two  princi- 
pal divisions,  one,  objective,  having  a  content  which  is  suscep- 
tible of  spacial  expression,  and  so  of  appeal  through  the  eye ; 
and  the  other,  subjective,  with  time  as  its  ground,  and  the  ear 
as  its  medium  of  recognition. 

The  '  Artistic  Imagination '  is  not  confined,  of  course,  to  the 
actual  production  of  works  of  art,  but  includes  all  such  exercise 
of  the  creative  power  as  might  be  caught  and  delineated  in 
color,  in  light  and  shade,  or  in  plastic  form  by  an  artist  of  suffi- 
cient power.  This  pictorial  power  is  possessed  in  vastly  varying 
degrees,  but  there  is  no  one  who  has  it  not  in  some  measure. 
The  power  to  recall  the  look  of  things  implies  it,  since  memory 
is  rarely  or  never  able  to  reproduce  a  sense-perception  in  per- 
fectness  of  details,  and  these  must  be  supplied  by  this  artistic 


THE    IMAGINATION.  13! 

imagination.  The  whole  world  of  art  owes  its  existence  to  the 
distinctness  with  which  the  painter,  the  sculptor,  and  the  archi- 
tect is  enabled  to  see  in  the  mind  the  beauty  of  form,  the 
charm  of  color,  the  grace  and  massiveness  and  power  of  his 
ideal,  before  it  is  caught  in  the  meshes  of  the  actual. 

The  world  is  not  less  indebted  to  the  creative  power  of  the 
Rhythmic  Imagination.  All  elevated  thought  and  speech,  the 
power  and  beauty  in  the  numbers  of  the  poet  —  all  arrange- 
ments of  language  in  which  originality  and  grace,  sentiment 
and  pathos,  beauty  and  sublimity,  are  found  single  or  combined, 
involve  a  rhythmic  element,  which,  while  not  the  sole  ground, 
cannot  be  removed  without  fatal  loss. 

In  music  the  rhythmic  effect  is  still  further  heightened.  The 
auxiliary  elements  which  enter  poetry  through  the  concept- 
world  drop  out,  and  the  ear  is  left  free  to  revel  in  the  possi- 
bilities of  infinitely  varied  numbers.  In  melody  the  gradations 
of  intervals,  and  successions  of  cadence,  with  endless  play,  rise 
and  swell  in  adagio  or  andante  sweetness,  in  the  graceful  flow 
of  the  legato,  or  the  clear  sharp  ring  of  the  staccato  movement. 
The  power  and  depth  of  harmony,  the  '  concord  of  sweet 
sounds,'  opens  a  still  further  world  of  rhythmic  power. 

There  is  nothing  more  amazing  than  the  grasp  of  the  imag- 
ination in  music.  To  hear  in  fancy  hundreds  of  instruments 
and  voices,  blended  and  distinct  at  the  same  time,  and  follow 
them  through  the  sweep  and  crash  of,  say,  a  Wagnerian  opera, 
requires  a  power  which  is  bewildering  and  mysterious. 

Memory  and  Imagination  are  intimately  related,  but  quite 
distinct  in  character.  It  is  the  business  of  memory  to  repro- 
duce faithfully  and  servilely  the  actual ;  imagination  rises  above 
the  trammels  of  dead  reality  and  deals  only  with  the  possible. 
Memory  speaks  only  as  a  witness ;  imagination  is  free,  and 
creates  for  memory  to  report.  Memory  is  the  patient  drudge ; 
imagination  is  the  master  and  lord ;  and,  like  a  master,  it  uses 
the  memory  at  every  point.  It  is  the  original  and  creative 


132  MECHANISM    AND    PERSONALITY. 

energy  of  the  self.  It  is  only  bound  in  that  it  is  compelled 
to  use  the  material  furnished  by  memory.  It  has  no  power  to 
create  ab  initio.  The  self  cannot  imagine  a  new  sensation  of 
any  sort/ — a  new  perfume,  a  new  tint,  or  flavor,  or  any  quality 
or  power  of  the  actual  world.  For  all  these,  it  must  rely  upon 
the  memory.  It  has  the  power,  however,  to  tear  apart,  and 
fecombine  and  arrange.  The  result  is  new,  and  every  effort 
which  is  a  self-determined  readjustment  of  existing  concepts, 
is  original.  The  Cyclops  and  the  hippogriff  were  creations  in 
the  mind  of  some  genius  of  antiquity  in  whose  fancy  the  con- 
ceits first  took  shape.  So  with  the  centaur,  the  mermaid,  the 
dragon,  "  gorgons,  and  hydras,  and  chimeras  dire."  These  were 
all  creations  of  the  human  mind ;  and  yet  there  is  not  a  single 
sentient  element  in  them  all  which  was  not  supplied  by  an  act 
of  memory. 

But  though  it  must  be  admitted  that  this  sphere-cleaving 
Pegasus  is  at  the  same  time  a  quiet,  domestic  drudge,  working 
by  the  side  of  memory,  there  is  still  this  difference  :  imagina- 
tion always  has  its  face  towards  the  pregnant  future,  while  the 
memory  looks  back  upon  a  dead  past. 


DREAMING.  —  SOMNAMBULISM. HYPNOTISM.        133 


CHAPTER   XIV. 

DREAMING.  —  SOMNAMBULISM.  —  HYPNOTISM. 

Phenomenon  of  Dreaming,  Sleep.  Do  we  always  dream  in  sleep? 
The  brain  a  thought-machine.  Consciousness  a  mere  phenomenon.  The 
brain  in  sleep.  Masso's  observations.  Character  of  dreams.  Nightmare. 
Somnambulism.  Case  of  student  at  Amsterdam.  Case  recorded  by  Dr. 
Abercrombie.  German  monk.  Muscular  feats.  Double  consciousness. 
Case  of  young  lady  at  West  Point.  Hypnotism.  Muscular  effects.  Dr. 
Charcot  quoted.  '  Suggestions.' 

THERE  is  perhaps  no  physio-psychic  problem  which  has 
proved  more  baffling  in  all  attempts  at  explanation  than 
the  phenomenon  of  Dreaming.  It  has  engaged  the  attention 
of  philosophers  from  the  earliest  ages,  and  has  been  much  dis- 
cussed in  the  light  of  modern  physiological  research;  but  it 
still  presents  many  difficulties. 

The  question  which  meets  us  at  the  threshold  of  the  inquiry 
is  one  strictly  physiological ;  What  is  sleep  ?  It  seems  to  be  a 
universal  phenomenon  of  animate  nature ;  and  is  undoubtedly 
a  periodical  rest  demanded  in  all  vital  action.  Even  the  vege- 
table world  shows  states  of  repose ;  and  in  the  lower  animate 
world,  as  in  insects,  crustaceans,  fishes,  and  reptiles  the  motion- 
less state  constantly  recurring  is  hardly  susceptible  of  other 
explanation.  In  birds 'and  the  lower  mammals,  the  phenome- 
non admits  of  no  question  whatever.  That  it  is  a  rest  of  the 
nervous  system,  with  a  renewal  of  the  energy  expended  in  the 
hours  of  wakefulness,  seems  clear  enough ;  and  the  need  of 
such  refreshment  is  easily  comprehended  by  man,  who  finds 
himself  fatigued  after  periods  of  effort ;  but  this  is  a  pathologi- 


134  MECHANISM    AND    PERSONALITY. 

cal  need  read  into  the  phenomenon,  and  affords  no  explanation 
whatever.  It  can  hardly  be  expected  that  any  perfectly  satis- 
factory explanation  of  dream-phenomena  will  ever  be  reached 
until  physiology  can  tell  us  what  sleep  really  is,  since  dreaming 
is  so  closely  related  to  this  phenomenon. 

The  further  question  presents  itself,  and  has  been  much  dis- 
cussed :  Are  we,  when  asleep,  always  dreaming  ?  Opinion 
seems  about  equally  divided,  —  at  least  the  names  on  either 
side  are  sufficiently  famous  —  the  metaphysicians,  as  a  rule, 
holding  the  affirmative,  and  the  physicists  the  negative;  — 
Descartes,  Leibnitz,  Kant,  Hamilton,  and  the  a  priorists  gener- 
ally on  one  side,  and  Locke  and  his  followers  on  the  other.  In 
the  nature  of  the  case,  the  question  can  never  be  fully  settled. 
The  only  witness  that  can  give  first-hand  testimony  is  conscious- 
ness itself,  and  it  can  answer  only  from  memory  :  and  as  there 
are  confessedly  vast  areas  about  which  memory  is  a  blank,  it 
can  never  be  finally  known  whether  in  those  areas  there  is  a 
continuance  of  consciousness  or  not.  It  seems  to  be  certain, 
however,  that  there  are  often  intervals  of  consciousness  in  those 
periods  which  at  first  seem  blank,  since  all  of  us  find  ourselves 
remembering  in  the  course  of  the  day  fragments  of  dreams  of 
which  in  the  morning  we  had  no  recollection  whatever.  It  is 
also  urged  with  strong  probability,  that  as  during  our  waking 
periods  much  goes  on  of  which  we  are  certainly  conscious,  and 
yet  of  which,  a  short  time  after,  we  have  no  recollection,  the 
failure  of  memory  to  reproduce  all  dreams  is  not  a  sufficient 
reason  for  denying  a  continuity  of  consciousness.  Again,  it  is 
urged  that  dreams  are  only  the  play  of  cerebral  activity  in  inter- 
vals which  are  not  properly  sleep,  but  of  partial  wakefulness ; 
and  that  they  may  be  remembered  or  not  according  to  the 
vividness  of  such  action.  The  extreme  rapidity  with  which 
dream-scenes  chase  each  other  —  as,  for  example,  in  the  case 
of  Lord  Holland,  who  fell  asleep  while  listening  to  a  reader, 
had  a  long  dream,  and  yet  awoke  in  time  to  catch  the  end  of 


DREAMING.  —  SOMNAMBULISM.  —  HYPNOTISM.       135 

the  sentence  begun  before  sleep  overtook  him,  —  makes  it  pos- 
sible to  do  any  amount  of  dream-work  in  very  inconsiderable 
periods  of  partial  wakefulness.  But  the  difficulty  here  is  that 
many  sleepers  are  dreaming  —  even  talking  and  acting  while 
profoundly  unconscious  of  everything  about  them  —  sleeping 
on  though  roughly  handled,  and  yet  remember  nothing  of  their 
visions,  though  they  make  the  effort  the  moment  after  waking. 
The  same  thing  is  seen  in  the  dumb  animals.  We  have  all  seen 
dogs  evidently  engaged  in  the  chase  while  apparently  in  the 
soundest  slumber. 

It  is  not  to  be  doubted  that  even  in  the  waking  state  there 
is  a  vast  area  of  psychical  phenomena  which  lies  out  of  the 
circle  of  consciousness.  This  circle  is  extremely  variable. 
When  the  attention  is  sharply  fixed  the  field  of  consciousness 
is  very  narrow ;  but  when  there  is  a  rapid  change  of  attention 
from  point  to  point  it  becomes  indefinitely  widened ;  so  that 
there  are  at  all  times  many  reactions  in  the  cerebral  hemi- 
spheres which  would  be  knowledge  if  taken  account  of  by  the 
self.  The  molecular  changes  which  give  rise  to  thought  go  on 
doubtless  in  sleep  much  in  the  way  they  do  when  one  is  awake, 
except  that  they  are  in  large  degree  without  purposive 
direction. 

We  are,  indeed,  driven  to  the  conclusion  that  the  cerebral 
hemispheres  are  simply  thought  machines.  This  does  not 
mean,  however,  that  the  brain  thinks :  no  machine  ever  does 
anything  of  itself.  A  machine  is  an  instrument  merely ;  and 
the  idea  of  an  instrument  carries  with  it  necessarily  a  higher 
power  which  uses  it.  For  example  —  a  loom  is  a  machine  by 
means  of  which  certain  materials  are  woven  into  a  textile  fabric  : 
but  the  machine  by  no  means  makes  the  cloth.  It  does  a  cer- 
tain work  in  putting  the  materials  together ;  but  there  are  two 
very  important  factors  which  it  is  wholly  inadequate  to  furnish. 
They  are,  first,  the  materials  wrought  upon,  and  second  the 
personal  factor  by  which  alone  the  machine  and  the  materials 


136  MECHANISM   AND   PERSONALITY. 

are  brought  together.  No  mechanism,  though  carried  to  the 
utmost  limit  of  perfection,  could  make  cloth.  If  in  the  cate- 
gory of  its  perfections  it  be  demanded  that  there  shall  be  the 
power  to  go  forth  and  gather  its  materials,  discriminate  as 
to  quality,  devise  the  pattern  of  the  fabric  and  enjoy  the  pre- 
rogative of  conscious  self-regulation,  the  mechanism  mani- 
festly ceases  to  be  a  mere  machine  :  —  it  becomes  just  what  is 
meant  by  personality.  Nobody  ever  yet  saw  anything  done, 
that  is,  a  purposive  end  accomplished,  when  he  was  in  the 
secret  of  the  doing,  in  which  he  did  not  know  a  personal  element 
to  be  present.  Iron  and  brass  and  wood  do  not  rush  together 
and  form  a  steam-engine,  but  they  are  consciously  combined 
by  a  thinker ;  and  so  of  every  possible  contrivance.  If  it  be 
answered  that  this  is  not  true  in  the  processes  of  nature,  the 
obvious  reply  is  that  that  is  the  very  point  in  issue  :  that  it  is  a 
pure  assumption,  in  the  face  of  all  analogy,  that  there  is  no 
thought  power  by  which  its  processes  are  directed. 

In  granting,  therefore,  that  the  neural  mechanism  in  its 
highest  form  is  a  thought  producer,  the  necessity  for  the 
material  of  thought  (stimuli),  and  the  presence  of  the  operator 
(ego)  must  be  presupposed.  Now  in  many  of  the  cunningly 
devised  machines,  the  material  having  been  selected  and 
placed,  it  is  possible  for  the  operator  to  turn  his  back  for  a 
time,  or  even  attend  to  something  else  quite  different  from  the 
mechanical  work,  while  it  goes  on  perfectly  well.  This  seems 
to  be  the  case  with  all  the  reflex  or  automatic  activity  of  the 
human  mechanism  in  which  at  the  beginning  attention  was 
necessary ;  but  which,  after  being  rightly  set,  goes  on  meas- 
urably well,  even  better  sometimes  without  attention  than 
with  it. 

Now  it  is  hardly  to  be  questioned  that  in  the  human  thought 
mechanism  changes  and  modifications  are  constantly  taking 
place  far  below  the  threshold  of  cognition,  and  especially  must 
this  be  the  case  in  the  silence  of  sleep.  It  is  doubtless  due  to 


DREAMING.  —  SOMNAMBULISM.  —  HYPNOTISM.       137 

this  fact  that  perplexing  questions  which  have  been  under- 
going a  mental  discussion  within  us,  and  have  been  left  in  an 
unsettled  state  before  going  to  bed  at  night,  appear  to  us  in  the 
morning,  after  an  undisturbed  rest,  in  a  clear  and  decided  light. 
Concepts  have  been  brought  together  and  arranged  by  the 
apperceiving  power,  which  is  an  ever-active  propulsion  of  our 
cognitive  nature,  and  the  result  is  a  clearing  up  of  what  before 
was  uncertainty  and  confusion.  Cases  of  such  unconscious 
cerebration  must  have  fallen  within  the  experience  of  every- 
body. 

If  what  has  already  been  said  on  the  subject  of  the  neces- 
sary co-action  of  the  imagination  in  arriving  at  any  conclusion 
be  true,  this  cognitive  power  must  have  exerted  an  energy  in 
such  cases  as  these ;  and  there  can  be  no  just  ground  for 
denying  large  possibilities  to  its  action.  Such  action  is  what 
we  call  dreaming.  If  the  repose  is  complete,  there  is  no  rec- 
ollection of  what  may  have  gone  on ;  but  the  activity  of  the 
neural  centres  may  be  so  energetic  as  to  force  upon  the  sleeper 
a  quasi,  or  even  vivid  recognition  of  its  activity ;  and  this  the 
memory  may  reproduce  with  greater  or  less  distinctness,  either 
immediately  upon  waking,  or  after  an  interval  of  time. 

This  explanation  implies,  first,  that  consciousness  is  by  no 
means  the  self,  nor  the  distinguishing  and  essential  charac- 
teristic of  the  personality  —  that  is,  consciousness  in  its  fully 
developed,  or  cognitive  form.  But  this  must  be  true,  else  the 
personality  would  suffer  absolute  and  fatal  breaks  in  its  con- 
tinuity; indeed,  would  be,  not  an  entity  at  all,  but  a  mere 
state  or  phenomenon,  —  consciousness  itself  being  the  witness. 
For  in  a  state  of  coma,  in  swoons,  in  dreamless  (so  far  as  known 
to  one's  self)  sleep,  in  the  antenatal  state  one  is  compelled  to 
confess  complete  blanks,  so  far  as  consciousness  can  testify. 
It  is  for  this  reason  that  we  hold  consciousness  to  be  a  phe- 
nomenon of  personality,  and  have  called  it  the  illuminated 
circle  of  cognition.  The  thought- mechanism  may  be  in  a  state 


138  MECHANISM    AND    PERSONALITY. 

of  perfect  suspension,  in  which  case  there  can  be  no  conscious- 
ness whatever,  or  it  may  go  on,  and  yet  not  come  within  the 
field  of  conscious  recognition;  and  in  this  case  there  is  no 
consciousness  of  such  mechanical  action. 

The  second  point  is  this  —  attention  is  active  and  implies 
energy.  In  the  state  of  relaxation  and  repose  which  we  call 
sleep,  the  conative  powers  lack  direction  and  control ;  that  is 
to  say,  the  will  is,  so  to  speak,  off  duty  or  asleep.  This  is  a 
most  important  and  significant  point.  It  must  be  remembered, 
as  we  have  seen  already,  that  the  functions  of  the  will  are  not 
only  to  promote  thought  and  action  by  concentrating  attention 
and  directing  movements,  but  that  an  equally  important  part 
of  its  work  is  inhibitory.  Indeed,  it  must  be  apparent,  that 
but  for  this  inhibitory  power,  recently  discovered  by  physiolo- 
gists, there  would  be  inextricable  confusion,  even  to  chaos,  in 
cerebral  action.  This  power,  in  a  way  not  yet  fully  under- 
stood, lays  its  hand,  so  to  speak,  on  the  vibratory  chords  in  the 
encephalic  organ  to  silence  and  prevent  their  action.  The  fact 
of  the  existence  of  such  a  factor  in  the  neural  system  goes  far 
to  confirm  the  independence  of  the  personality,  and  its  suprem- 
acy over  the  mechanism  which  nature  has  furnished  for  its 
objective  manifestations.  If  it  were  the  brain-mechanism  alone 
which  gives  thought  and  activity,  then  no  management  ought 
to  be  discoverable  :  that  is  to  say,  resuming  our  illustration  of 
the  machine,  there  could  be  found  no  room  for  the  presence 
and  control  of  the  operator. 

There  are  certain  other  facts,  recently  brought  to  light  by 
physiologists,  which  have  an  important  bearing  on  this  general 
question.  Passing  over  the  work  done  by  others,  among  the 
latest  and  most  thorough  observations  are  those  of  Mosso.  He 
made  observations  on  three  persons  who  had  lost  portions  of 
the  cranial  vault  leaving  the  brain  exposed,  protected  only  by 
a  soft  pulsating  cicatrix  —  a  man  and  a  woman  each  thirty- 
seven  years  old,  and  a  child  of  twelve.  He  succeeded  in 


DREAMING. SOMNAMBULISM.  HYPNOTISM.         1 39 

taking  simultaneous  tracings  of  the  pulse  at  the  wrist,  of  the 
beat  of  the  heart,  of  the  movement  of  the  chest,  and  of  the 
exposed  brain.  He  showed  that  during  sleep  there  is  a  dimin- 
ished amount  of  blood  in  the  brain,  and  an  increased  amount 
in  the  extremities.  He  showed,  further,  that  there  are  frequent 
adjustments  in  the  distribution  of  the  blood  during  sleep,  and 
that  this  distribution  is  easily  affected  by  external  stimuli, — 
thus,  a  stimulus  to  the  organs  of  sense  caused  a  contraction  of 
the  vessels  of  the  forearm,  an  increase  of  blood  pressure,  and 
a  determination  of  blood  to  the  brain ;  and  on  suddenly  awak- 
ening the  sleeper,  there  was  a  contraction  of  the  vessels  of  the 
brain,  a  general  rise  of  pressure,  and  an  accelerated  flow  of 
blood  through  the  hemispheres.  During  sleep,  a  loudly  spoken 
word,  a  sound,  a  touch,  the  action  of  light,  or  any  moderate 
sensory  impression  modified  the  rhythm  of  respiration,  quick- 
ened the  heart  beats,  and  caused  an  increased  flow  of  blood  to 
the  brain.  He  found  that  during  very  sound  sleep  these  oscil- 
lations disappear :  that  the  pulsatory  movements  are  regular, 
and  not  affected  by  sensory  impressions. 

Three  periodic  movements  of  the  brain  during  sleep  are 
fairly  certain:  (i)  pulsations  corresponding  to  the  beats  of 
the  heart;  (2)  oscillations  of  longer  period,  carrying  smaller 
waves,  thought  in  a  general  way,  to  correspond  to  the  respira- 
tory movements,  and  (3)  undulations,  still  longer,  thought  by 
Mosso  to  indicate  rhythmic  contractions  of  the  vessels  of  the 
membrane  (pia  mater)  which  covers  the  brain.  It  seems 
certain,  therefore,  that  during  sleep  there  is  a  comparatively 
bloodless  condition  of  the  brain.  An  examination  of  the  retina 
by  the  opthalmascope  during  sleep,  shows  the  same  thing.  Thus 
it  can  hardly  be  doubted  that  at  least  one  of  the  physiological 
reasons  for  dreamless  sleep  is  a  depleted  condition  of  the 
brain,  with  a  diminished  stimulation,  and  on  the  other  hand, 
for  the  active  dream  state,  the  continuance  of  blood  in  the 
vascular  system  of  the  brain,  or  its  return,  from  one  cause  or 
another  after  sleep  has  set  in. 


140  MECHANISM   AND   PERSONALITY. 

While  dreams  are  sometimes  coherent  and  sensible,  they  are, 
as  a  rule,  full  of  incongruities,  and  even  impossibilities,  as  pre- 
sented to  the  judgment  by  memory.  They  present  every  pos- 
sible variety  between  order  and  delirium.  There  are  notable 
cases  on  record  of  vigorous  thought-processes  carried  on  dur- 
ing sleep.  Condorcet  tells  us  that  the  solution  of  a  problem 
he  had  labored  over  for  some  time  ineffectually  was  worked  out 
for  him  in  a  dream;  Condillac  declares  that  subjects  which 
occupied  his  thoughts  upon  retiring  were  continued  successfully 
while  asleep ;  and  Coleridge  has  given  us  a  fragment  of  a 
dream-poem  —  Kubla-Khan  —  which  he  remembered  upon 
waking  from  a  sleep  in  his  chair.  These  are  among  the  most 
celebrated ;  but  most  people  have  had  experiences  not  unlike 
these,  though  perhaps  more  modest  in  degree.  Such  cases  of 
method  and  coherency  seem  to  follow  close  upon  trains  of  ideas 
prosecuted  vigorously  in  waking  hours,  and  the  fair  presump- 
tion is  that  the  power  of  directing  the  dream-imagery  in  some 
low  degree  at  least  is  still  active. 

These  cases,  however,  are  altogether  exceptional.  It  more 
often  happens  that  one  wakes  with  a  vivid  impression  of  some 
wonderful  dream  thought,  poem,  invention,  or  argument,  which 
under  the  '  dry-light '  of  the  understanding  proves  to  be  a 
1  baseless  fabric.' 

The  '  stuff  that  dreams  are  made  of '  is  usually  very  queer, 
sadly  lacking  in  coherence  and  cogency.  Assuming  the  direct- 
ing and  inhibitory  power  to  be  dormant,  while  the  brain-cells 
are  in  a  state  of  activity,  presenting  to  consciousness  the  mate- 
rial of  thought  without  system  and  arrangement,  the  most  fan- 
tastic and  grotesque  results  are  accounted  for.  The  living  and 
the  dead  would  commingle,  as  we  know  they  do  in  dreams, 
and  that  without  the  least  incongruity  to  a  power  which,  in  it- 
self, has  nothing  to  do  but  take  note  of  what  is  presented. 
There  can  be  no  absurdity,  no  moral  quality,  no  surprise,  so 
long  as  the  understanding  is  inactive ;  and  it  should  seem  to 


DREAMING.  —  SOMNAMBULISM.  —  HYPNOTISM.       14! 

be  for  this  reason  that  even  time  and  space  forms  are  so  con- 
stantly set  at  naught  in  dreams. 

But  yet  it  often  happens  in  dream  fantasies  that  some 
question  as  to  the  reality  of  the  scenes  presented  arises  in 
consciousness ;  as,  for  example,  when  one  has  a  dream  within 
a  dream.  Some  years  ago,  if  I  may  give  my  own  experience, 
I  dreamed  that  in  making  some  excavations  for  the  foundation 
of  a  building,  a  little  negro  boy,  about  twelve  years  old,  was 
dug  up  alive  and  in  perfect  health.  It  was  such  a  remarkable 
event  that  it  excited  great  attention ;  and  a  number  of  gentle- 
men (so  the  dream  went)  set  to  work  to  investigate  the  phe- 
nomenon. The  boy  was  put  through  a  series  of  questions; 
and,  as  he  had  been  buried  before  the  late  war,  then  happily 
over,  he  was  experimented  upon,  in  his  ignorance  of  the  changed 
relations,  to  test  his  memory  and  witness  his  surprise  at  the 
new  order  of  things.  It  all  seemed  so  extraordinary,  that  I 
(the  dreamer),  suspected  the  whole  thing  to  be  a  dream ;  and 
accordingly  went  out  on  the  street,  and  looked  about  to  see 
if  everything  was  natural,  —  spoke  to  several  acquaintances, 
asked  them  whether  I  was  awake  or  asleep,  and,  having  thor- 
oughly assured  myself  that  I  was  fully  awake,  went  back  to 
resume  the  interesting  investigation. 

In  this  case  it  should  seem  that  it  was  not  really  the  under- 
standing which  suggested  the  doubt,  nor  to  which  the  test  was 
submitted ;  but  that  it  was  simply  a  fancied  or  imaginary 
understanding,  and  so  of  a  piece  with  all  the  rest  of  the  scene. 

In  what  is  called  '  nightmare  '  the  dream-state  is  complicated 
by  more  or  less  futile  attempts  at  muscular  activity,  with  a 
sense  of  horrible  inability  to  escape  some  fancied  bondage  or 
impending  danger.  When  the  movement  is  a  part  of  the  dream 
proper,  and  remains  purely  imaginary,  the  motor  nerves  seem 
not  to  be  affected,  though  in  the  case  of  the  vocal  powers  they 
often  really  act  without  any  sense  of  oppression.  Many  people, 
especially  children,  talk  in  their  sleep  ;  and  it  is  sometimes  the 


142  MECHANISM    AND    PERSONALITY. 

case  that  sleepers  will  answer  questions  put  to  them,  with  a 
certain  degree  of  freedom.  Indeed,  it  is  not  impossible  to 
direct  the  current  of  dreams  to  some  extent  by  stimuli  judi- 
ciously applied,  the  reason  for  which  is  obvious  enough  from 
what  has  been  already  said. 

In  the  phenomena  of  somnambulism  we  have  a  more  pro- 
nounced phase  of  psychical  and  muscular  action  combined. 
The  cognitive  powers  remain  clear  in  certain  particulars,  and 
the  motor  action  seems  unusually  perfect,  while  sense-percep- 
tion, except  in  certain  special  phases,  seems  quite  suspended. 
Talking  in  sleep  is  an  incipient  form  of  somnambulism ;  but  in 
its  developed  form  the  sleeper  rises,  dresses  himself,  enters 
upon  the  execution  of  some  purpose,  often  of  a  delicate  and 
complicated  character ;  and  finally  returns  to  bed,  and  in  the 
morning  has  no  recollection  of  his  doings,  except,  perhaps,  as  a 
mere  dream.  Cases  are  on  record  of  persons  who  have  per- 
formed all  sorts  of  acts  in  sleep ;  as  of  mechanics  who  have 
got  up,  and  gone  on  with  their  ordinary  work ;  musicians  who 
have  shown  higher  powers  than  they  possessed  in  their  waking 
moments,  —  the  voice  sweeter  and  more  powerful,  the  instru- 
mentation more  firm  and  delicate.  One  man  was  known  to 
saddle  his  horse,  and  ride  to  his  market-place,  miles  away. 

The  somnambule  possesses  sense-perceptions,  or,  at  least, 
powers  of  external  recognition,  which  are  wholly  unknown  to 
us  in  our  waking  hours.  For  example,  there  is  some  power 
which  seems  to  take  the  place  of  sight.  Dr.  Carpenter  tells  us 
of  the  case  of  a  student  at  Amsterdam,  to  whom  a  difficult 
calculation  had  been  submitted  by  his  mathematical  professor. 
He  had  toiled  at  it  for  three  nights  in  succession ;  and  on  the 
last  night  had  been  compelled  to  retire  without  reaching  a 
successful  issue,  his  candle  having  burnt  out,  with  no  other  in 
reach.  Upon  rising  in  the  morning,  he  was  distressed  at  the 
thought  of  again  disappointing  his  professor,  who  expected  him 
to  accomplish  the  solution,  when,  on  approaching  his  table,  he 


DREAMING. SOMNAMBULISM. HYPNOTISM.        143 

found  the  problem  fully  solved  in  his  own  handwriting,  and  in 
what  turned  out  to  be  a  new  and  shorter  way  than  before 
known ;  and  all  this  he  had  done  in  the  dark. 

Dr.  Abercrombie  recites  the  case  of  an  eminent  person  who, 
having  been  consulted  in  a  difficult  matter,  studied  it  deeply 
for  several  days  without  arriving  at  definite  conclusions.  His 
wife  saw  him  rise  in  the  night,  go  to  the  writing-desk,  in  the 
same  room,  and  write  a  long  paper,  carefully  fold  and  put  it 
away  in  the  desk.  In  the  morning  he  told  his  wife  that  he 
had  had  a  remarkable  dream,  —  had  dreamed  that  he  had 
delivered  a  clear  and  voluminous  opinion  in  the  case  which  had 
perplexed  him  for  days,  and  that  he  would  give  anything  to 
recover  the  train  of  thought.  She  directed  him  to  the  desk, 
where  he  found  the  opinion  fully  written  out. 

A  case  is  on  record  of  a  young  monk  in  Germany,  whose 
work  during  the  day  was  that  of  a  scrivener.  He  often  rose 
in  his  sleep  and  went  on  with  his  work.  Divers  experiments 
were  tried  upon  him.  Among  other  things  a  screen  was  inter- 
posed between  his  eyes  and  his  manuscript  while  writing,  and 
was  found  to  make  no  sort  of  difference.  He  kept  the  right 
spaces  perfectly,  and  dotted  his  '  i's '  and  crossed  his  '  t's '  with 
his  usual  accuracy.  Indeed,  the  sense  of  sight  seems  not  to  be 
used  by  the  somnambule.  The  eye  is  dull,  and  sometimes  shut, 
and  yet  in  walking,  obstacles  are  avoided  perfectly,  although 
they  are  newly  placed,  as,  for  example,  a  chair  put  in  front  of 
the  sleep-walker  as  he  advances. 

The  muscular  feats  performed  by  somnambulists  are  equally 
unaccountable.  Persons  in  this  abnormal  state  seem  to  have 
no  sense  of  danger,  clambering  out  of  windows,  and  walking 
on  the  narrowest  ledges  at  giddy  heights  without  the  least  sign 
of  caution.  They  constantly  do  what  they  could  not  in  a  nor- 
mal state.  I  may  mention  a  case  in  point  which  has  always 
puzzled  me.  When  a  lad  I  occupied  the  same  room  with  a 
younger  brother ;  he  was  about  twelve  years  old.  Upon  enter- 


144  MECHANISM    AND    PERSONALITY. 

ing  the  room  one  night  I  found  him  in  his  night-clothes, 
stretched  at  full  length  on  the  mantel  shelf,  with  some  books 
for  a  pillow.  The  shelf  was  quite  narrow,  and  about  up  to  his 
chin ;  how  he  got  up  I  never  could  make  out.  There  was  no 
sign  of  chair  or  other  thing  to  assist  him.  When  I  spoke  to 
him  he  quietly  landed  on  his  feet  and  jumped  into  bed. 

Another  marvellous  fact  is  that  somnambulists  sometimes 
have  a  sort  of  double  consciousness,  —  in  their  waking  state 
living  one  life,  in  their  somnambulic  state  another,  with  an 
orderly  sequence  and  coherence.  This  presents  itself  in  many 
degrees  and  phases.  Perhaps  the  most  curious  example  is  in  the 
case  preserved  by  Dr.  Abercrombie  in  his  "  Intellectual  Pow- 
ers," of  a  young  lady  at  West  Point.  The  affection  began  with 
an  attack  of  somnolency  which  was  protracted  much  beyond  the 
usual  time.  "  When  she  came  out  of  it,  she  was  found  to  have 
lost  every  kind  of  acquired  knowledge.  She  immediately  began 
to  apply  herself  to  the  first  elements  of  education,  and  was  mak- 
ing considerable  progress,  when,  after  several  months,  she  was 
seized  with  a  second  attack  of  somnolency.  She  was  now  at  once 
restored  to  all  the  knowledge  which  she  possessed  before  the 
first  attack,  but  without  the  least  recollection  of  anything  that 
had  taken  place  during  the  interval.  After  another  interval 
she  had  a  third  attack  of  somnolency,  which  left  her  in  the 
same  state  as  after  the  first.  In  this  manner  she  suffered  these 
alternate  conditions  for  a  period  of  four  years,  with  the  very 
remarkable  circumstance  that  during  the  one  state  she  retained 
all  her  original  knowledge ;  but  during  the  other,  that  only 
which  she  had  acquired  since  the  first  attack.  During  the 
healthy  period,  for  example,  she  was  remarkable  for  the  beauty 
of  her  penmanship,  but  during  the  paroxysm  wrote  a  poor, 
awkward  hand.  Persons  introduced  to  her  during  the  par- 
oxysm, she  recognized  only  in  a  subsequent  paroxysm,  but  not 
in  the  interval ;  and  persons  whom  she  had  seen  for  the  first 
time  during  the  healthy  interval,  she  did  not  recognize  during 
the  attack." 


DREAMING. SOMNAMBULISM.  —  HYPNOTISM.        145 

It  is  not  to  be  disputed  that  there  is  much  so  far  unex- 
plained in  the  somnambulic  phenomena.  Indeed  it  is  but  one 
of  a  number  of  classes,  of  psychical  as  well  as  physical  phe- 
nomena still  remaining  in  the  domain  of  mystery. 

Another  very  remarkable  state,  first  called,  in  modern  times, 
Mesmerism,  and  later  Animal  Magnetism,  Electro-Biology,  etc., 
but  now  almost  universally  known  as  Hypnotism  (from  VTH/OS, 
sleep),  is  clearly  allied  to  that  of  Somnambulism.  Its  present 
name  was  given  it  by  Dr.  Braid,  of  Manchester,  who,  in  1841, 
set  out  to  show  the  Mesmeric  craze,  then  extant  in  England, 
to  be  founded  in  fraud  and  delusion ;  but  he  soon  found  that 
it  had  an  extraordinary  psychic  truth  at  bottom.  He  stripped 
it  of  the  magical  and  magnetic  elements,  by  showing  that  the 
artificial  or  pseudo-sleep  could  be  induced  in  the  simplest  pos- 
sible manner  without  passes,  or  magnets,  or  darkened  cham- 
bers. His  method  —  which  still  prevails  —  was  to  cause  the 
subject  to  gaze  fixedly  upon  some  bright  object  held  at  from 
ten  to  fifteen  inches  from  the  eyes  and  a  little  elevated :  in  a 
short  time  the  pupils  begin  to  relax,  the  eyelids  become  un- 
steady, then  close,  or  if  they  do  not,  the  operator,  marking  the 
change  which  comes  over  the  subject's  expression,  closes  them 
with  a  gentle  pressure  of  his  finger,  at  the  same  time  quietly 
stroking  the  brow  or  cheeks.  A  good  subject,  after  having 
been  hypnotized  a  number  of  times,  may  be  put  to  sleep  by 
gazing  a  moment  at  the  point  of  the  operator's  finger,  or  by  a 
look,  or,  as  it  is  asserted,  by  a  mere  effort  of  will  on  the  part 
of  the  operator.  It  is  necessary  as  a  rule  that  the  operator 
shall  have  the  good-will  of  the  subject ;  but  Dr.  Charcot  asserts, 
in  a  late  number  of  The  Forum,  that  he  has  often  succeeded 
in  surprising  unwilling  patients  into  the  hypnotic  state  by  sud- 
denly disclosing  an  electric  or  magnesium  light,  afid  also  by 
the  use  of  a  very  large  tuning-fork  operated  by  an  electro- 
magnet, gradually  brought  up  to  its  full  intensity,  or  by  the 
sudden  bang  of  a  gong.  He  says,  however,  that  these  methods 


146  MECHANISM    AND    PERSONALITY. 

are  not  always  successful ;  and  it  seems  that  the  patients  experi- 
mented upon  were  of  a  peculiar  hysterical  character. 

Hypnotized  patients  lose  almost  all  independence  of  will,  and 
the  imagination  is  in  an  analogous  condition  to  that  of  the 
dream  state.  They  obey  any  order,  or  suggestion  of  the  oper- 
ator, almost  as  if  they  were  mere  machines,  and  believe  any- 
thing told  them  however  absurd  or  ridiculous.  Even  the 
senses  seem  to  undergo  temporary  change.  They  will  eat  or 
drink  anything,  however  unpalatable,  with  apparent  relish,  if 
only  told  that  it  is  something  ordinarily  enjoyable.  A  stick  put 
into  a  patient's  hands  becomes  a  snake  at  the  suggestion  of  the 
operator,  and  he  drops  it,  and  starts  back  with  fright :  a  bundle 
of  rags  becomes  an  infant,  and  he  fondles  and  caresses  it :  he 
will  bestride  a  chair  and  go  through  all  the  motions  of  riding  a 
horse,  —  nothing  is  too  ridiculous ;  and  even  all  sense  of  de- 
cency and  honesty  seem  lost. 

An  extraordinary  class  of  muscular  effects  is  produced.  A 
perfect  rigidity  or  relaxation  of  a  muscle  or  a  set  of  muscles,  or 
even  of  the  whole  body,  can  be  induced  by  the  operator.  The 
arm  or  leg  may  be  made  absolutely  inflexible,  —  the  eyes  fixed 
upon  the  ceiling  in  such  a  prolonged  and  constrained  position 
as  would  be  impossible  in  a  normal  state ;  the  patient  being 
left  for  an  indefinite  time  gazing  like  a  statue  ;  or,  the  body  in 
a  state  of  rigidity  may  be  '  laid  like  a  log,  head  and  heels  on 
two  chairs,  so  stiff  and  rigid  as  to  bear  the  weight  of  the  oper- 
ator sitting  upon  him.'  The  patient  may  be  kept  for  hours  in 
the  hypnotic  state,  and  then  roused  by  a  series  of  passes,  or  by 
holding  him  a  moment  and  blowing  gently  in  the  face. 

There  are  still  further  marvels  of  this  abnormal  trance-like 
state.  Says  Dr.  Charcot :  "  Take  one  example  among  a  thou- 
sand. I  present  a  woman  patient  in  the  hypnotic  state  a  blank 
leaf  of  paper,  and  say  to  her :  '  Here  is  my  portrait ;  what  do 
you  think  of  it  —  is  it  a  good  likeness  ? '  After  a  moment's 
hesitation  she  answers,  '  Yes  indeed,  your  photograph ;  will  you 


DREAMING. SOMNAMBULISM.  —  HYPNOTISM.        147 

give  it  to  me  ?  '  To  impress  deeply  in  the  mind  of  the  subject 
that  imaginary  portrait,  I  point  my  finger  toward  one  of  the 
four  sides  of  the  square  leaf  of  paper,  and  tell  her  that  my 
profile  looks  in  that  direction ;  I  describe  my  clothing.  The 
image  being  now  fixed  in  her  mind,  I  take  the  leaf  of  paper, 
and  mix  it  with  a  score  of  other  leaves  precisely  like  it.  I  then 
hand  the  whole  pack  to  the  patient,  bidding  her  go  over  them, 
and.  let  me  know  if  she  finds  among  them  anything  she  has 
seen  before.  She  begins  to  look  at  the  leaves  one  after  an- 
other, and  as  soon  as  her  eyes  fall  upon  the  one  first  shown  her 
(I  have  made  a  mark  upon  it  which  she  could  not  discover), 
forthwith  she  exclaims  :  '  Look  —  your  portrait.'  What  is  more 
curious  still,  if  I  turn  the  leaf  over,  as  soon  as  her  eyes  rest 
upon  it,  she  turns  it  up,  saying  my  photograph  is  on  the 
obverse.  I  then  convey  to  her  the  order  that  she  shall  con- 
tinue to  see  the  portrait  on  the  blank  paper,  even  after  the 
hypnosis  has  passed.  Then  I  waken  her,  and  again  hand  to 
her  the  pack  of  papers,  requesting  her  to  look  over  them.  She 
handles  them  just  as  before  when  she  was  hypnotized,  and 
utters  the  same  exclamation,  'Look  —  your  portrait.'  If  now 
I  tell  her  she  may  retire,  she  returns  to  her  dormitory,  and  her 
first  care  will  be  to  show  to  her  companions  the  photograph  I 
have  given  her.  Of  course  her  companions  not  having  received 
the  suggestion  will  see  only  a  blank  leaf  of  paper  without  any 
trace  whatever  of  a  portrait ;  and  will  laugh  at  our  subject  and 
treat  her  as  a  visionary.  Furthermore,  this  suggestion,  this 
hallucination,  will,  if  I  wish,  continue  several  days ;  all  I  have 
to  do  is  to  express  the  wish  to  the  patient  before  awakening 
her." 

Here  the  marvellous  point  is  the  recognition  of  the  particu- 
lar leaf  out  of  a  number  entirely  like  it,  and  that  so  perfectly 
as  to  be  able  to  turn  it  always  so  as  to  keep  the  imaginary 
photograph  on  the  same  side,  and  right  side  up.  But,  as  Dr. 
Charcot  says,  we  need  not  on  this  account  call  in  any  preter- 


148  MECHANISM    AND    PERSONALITY. 

natural  agency ;  a  sharpening  of  the  powers  of  sense,  however, 
must  be  admitted ;  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  every  bit  of 
paper  differs  widely  from  every  other,  however  like  it  may 
appear  to  our  senses  in  a  normal  condition,  and  it  is  only  fair 
to  assume  that  the  sensibilities  in  their  abnormal  state  are 
able  to  note  these  differences.  By  what  sense  this  is  accom- 
plished it  is  impossible  to  say,  but  there  are  facts  which  entirely 
warrant  us  in  the  conviction  that  at  least  the  sense  of  smell  is 
wonderfully  sharpened  —  almost  transformed.  Thus,  Dr.  Car- 
penter says,  that  he  has  known  a  youth  in  the  hypnotic  state, 
to  find  out  the  owner  of  a  glove  placed  in  his  hand,  in  a  com- 
pany of  sixty,  by  the  sense  of  smell,  —  scenting  at  each  of 
them  until  he  came  to  the  right  person.  In  another  case,  the 
owner  of  a  ring  was  unhesitatingly  found  out,  from  among  a 
company  of  twelve ;  the  ring  having  been  withdrawn  from  the 
finger  before  the  patient  was  introduced.  He  also  says  that 
he  has  seen  cases  in  which  the  sense  of  temperature  was  ex- 
traordinarily exalted.  The  increased  delicacy  and  power  of  the 
sense  of  sight  in  the  somnambulic  state  has  been  already 
spoken  of. 

It  should  seem  that  in  the  case  of  a  hypnotic  patient  the  will 
of  the  operator  is  in  a  large  degree  substituted  for  the  will  of 
the  patient,  and  that  the  whole  mechanism  of  the  personality 
is  under  his  domination.  It  is  a  dream-state,  in  which  the 
suggestions  of  the  operator  are  substituted  for  the  chance  stim- 
uli which  affect  the  sleeper.  The  most  remarkable  fact  is  that 
suggestions  may  be  made  to  affect  the  patient  hours,  or  even 
days  after  being  relieved  from  the  hypnotic  state. 


THE    UNDERSTANDING.  149 


CHAPTER  XV. 

THE   UNDERSTANDING.' 

A  technical  phase  of  Cognition.  Faculty  of  Relations.  Thought 
proper.  The  lower  animals.  Pain.  Logical  element  in  man.  The  Syl- 
logism. Dictum  of  Aristotle.  Deductive  and  Inductive  Methods.  Re- 
ciprocal processes.  Hypotheticals. 

LIKE  all  other  activities  of  the  self  the  'understanding' 
is  easily  distinguishable  after  it  has  reached  a  tolerable 
state  of  development ;  but  as  we  trace  our  way  back  towards 
the  first  elements  of  knowledge,  its  functions  necessarily  grow 
less  and  less  distinct,  until  it,  with  all  other  self-modes,  sinks 
back  into  its  source  and  ground,  the  personality. 

The  understanding,  however,  is  discoverable  at  the  very 
threshold  of  consciousness,  and  is  always  present  in  any  act  or 
mode  of  conscious  self-energy.  It  is  the  thought  power, — 
the  instrument  of  all  knowing ;  and  can  only  itself  be  known 
in  the  '  empirical  ego/  through  its  own  function  of  distinguish- 
ing itself  from  the  other  two  co-ordinate  and  necessary  modes 
of  the  '  self,'  sensibility  and  will.  Sensibility  is  not  sensibility, 
volition  is  not  volition  in  the  sphere  of  consciousness,  until 
revealed  to  us  through  the  understanding. 

It  must  be  borne  in  mind  that  thought  or  cognition  has  a 
wider  scope  than  '  understanding '  in  its  technical  sense,  —  that 
sense-perception,  memory,  and  imagination  all  fall  under  the 
head  of  the  cognitive  energy. 

When,  however,  the  understanding  has  become  sufficiently 
differentiated  for  recognition,  we  discover  it  to  be  the  Faculty 
of  Relations.  Through  its  office  the  self  notes  consciously  the 


150  MECHANISM    AND    PERSONALITY. 

likeness  or  difference  between  two  concepts  brought  together 
for  comparison  by  the  conative  power.  We  must  distinguish 
between  it,  and  the  energy  which  brings  the  concepts  together 
for  comparison.  Its  business  is  to  comprehend,  —  to  see  and 
note  the  congruence  or  incongruence  of  the  concepts  as  pre- 
sented. It  deals  with  relations  simply  as  facts,  and  has  no 
power  to  change  jot  or  tittle.  It  sees,  if  so  be,  that  one  stick 
is  longer  than  another,  that  one  weight  is  heavier  than  another, 
that  the  centre  is  within  the  circle,  that  the  radii  are  equal,  and 
any  and  all  other  relations  which  lie  within  its  scope.  It  is  not 
omniscient  nor  infallible ;  that  is,  it  does  not  discover  to  us 
all  the  relations  which  subsist  between  the  concepts  compared, 
nor  is  it  always  right  with  regard  to  those  upon  which  atten- 
tion is  directed.  The  number  and  nature  of  those  discovered, 
and  the  accuracy  of  the  result  depend  upon  the  degree  of  ex- 
cellence in  the  particular  understanding  of  the  person  exercis- 
ing it. 

It  may  be  well  to  remind  the  reader  that  all  this  lies  in  the 
ideal  world.  The  sticks  as  objects  in  the  external  world  are 
not,  and  can  never  be,  compared.  The  comparison  is  between 
the  two  ideas  in  the  mind.  Even  if  the  two  sticks  are  laid 
alongside  each  other,  this  is  no  comparison.  They  might  lie 
so  forever,  and  there  would  never  be  any  comparison  until  the 
perceptions  of  them  in  the  self-world  are  judged  of  by  the 
understanding.  The  truth  of  the  concepts  themselves,  and 
the  clearness  of  their  relation  determine  the  excellence  of  the 
result.  In  other  words  the  amount  of  mental  energy  of  which 
any  particular  person  is  capable,  and  the  effort  he  puts  forth  at 
the  moment  determine  the  worth  of  any  judgment.  The  differ- 
ence between  any  concept  —  itself  a  result  of  the  apperceiving 
power  —  and  a  judgment,  which  is  the  result  of  comparing 
one  particular  concept  with  another,  is  clearly  one  of  degree 
only.  Into  the  concept,  there  have  gone  many  conclusions  of 
the  rudimentary  understanding.  They  have  lost  all  traces,  per- 


THE    UNDERSTANDING.  151 

haps,  of  the  individual  acts  which,  in  a  quasi  or  subconscious 
way,  have  entered  into  their  composition,  and  are  now  concrete 
wholes  ;  but  these  primary  acts  of  comparison  were  unquestion- 
ably the  work  of  the  same  power  which  we  now  in  its  developed 
state  call  the  understanding.  Apperception  and  understanding 
are  therefore  essentially  the  same  thing.  All  knowledge  is  the 
result  of  this  power  of  judging.  The  relations  of  the  actual, 
whether  with  or  without  physical  basis  originally,  are  the  dis- 
covery of  the  apperceiving  power ;  and  when  so  discovered  they 
are  committed  to  the  conserver  of  facts,  the  memory.  These 
residual  judgments,  explicit  and  distinct,  are  constantly  merged 
into  other  and  new  wholes,  which  are  nothing  more  than  higher 
concepts,  and  are  committed  to  the  memory  in  a  new  sign  or 
name,  as,  '  home,'  '  business,'  '  government,'  etc.  This  process 
never  ends. 

There  is  this  difference  to  be  noted,  however.  So  long  as 
the  actual  mergence  is  not  accomplished,  of  course  the  new 
concept  is  not  formed.  When  I  say  A  is  B,  the  A  and  the  B 
stand  out  in  their  individuality ;  and  although  the  content  in 
the  proposition  is  their  agreement  in  thought,  there  is  a  con- 
stant play  of  the  understanding  through  the  conative  energy, 
between  the  two  extremes ;  and  so  long  as  this  is  true,  it  is  not 
a  concept  proper,  but  a  judgment. 

We  can  proceed  one  step  further  in  the  process  of  building 
up  knowledge.  When  judgments  are  brought  together  and  dis- 
covered to  have  a  ground  of  agreement,  the  conclusion  must 
itself  be  a  judgment,  with  subject  and  predicate,  so  long  as  the 
judgments  stand  distinct  before  the  mind  :  but  when  they  are 
'  arrested,'  and  sink  out  of  sight,  a  long  step  is  taken  toward  a 
residual  concept  which  shall  absorb  the  terms  of  the  conclusion 
as  well. 

Thinking,  in  its  usual  acceptation,  is  the  process  of  judging, 
and  does  not  emerge  in  consciousness  until  after  a  large  accu- 
mulation of  elementary  knowledge.  From  what  has  just  been 


152  MECHANISM   AND    PERSONALITY. 

said,  as  well  as  from  the  whole  trend  of  what  has  gone  before,  it 
must  clearly  appear  that  thinking,  in  this  sense,  is  a  very  differ- 
ent thing  from  the  all  pervading  thought  power  which  we  have 
seen  to  be  fundamental  in  character.  Knowledge  of  a  low 
order  thus  precedes  thinking  proper. 

In  the  elementary  stages  of  knowing  there  is  no  conscious 
effort  in  the  concept  forming  process.  The  action  is  carried  on 
through  the  propulsion  of  a  life  power  —  an  instinct  of  the  per- 
sonality which  blindly  propels  the  self  forward  until  it  has  gained 
the  power  of  self-direction. 

Thinking,  then,  in  this  sense  has  in  it  a  larger  element  of  the 
will  power,  a  greater  effort  of  attention,  than  is  found  in  the 
lower  stages  of  knowing.  Perhaps  in  a  right  sense,  elemen- 
tary knowledge  can  hardly  be  called  thoughts.  It  affects  the 
mind  rather  in  a  sensuous  than  in  an  ideal  way.  There  is  no 
power  yet  of  abstraction,  and  so  there  are  not  yet  any  ideas 
proper.  Everything  is  concrete,  and  the  personality  is  controlled 
as  if  pushed  or  pulled  from  without ;  and  yet  we  must  recog- 
nize the  inchoate  cognitive  element  all  through  it. 

Thinking,  then,  really  begins  for  us,  when  the  conscious  effort 
of  comparing  concepts  for  purposes  of  judging  emerges  in  us. 
There  must  be  two  conspicuous  factors,  the  differentiated  power 
of  abstraction  and  the  conscious  effort  of  judging. 

In  this  light,  we  can  now  answer,  in  a  manner,  the  question 
everybody  is  asking  :  '  Do  not  the  lower  animals  think  ? '  Man- 
ifestly not,  in  this  only  right  sense  of  thinking.  They  seem  to 
have  neither  of  these  two  necessary  factors,  —  the  power  of 
holding  a  concept  in  its  differentiated  aspect  as  an  act  of  con- 
sciousness, nor  of  exerting  the  conscious  effort  of  comparison. 
They  undoubtedly  know  many  things,  and  they  perform  many 
acts  which  have  the  look  of  discrimination ;  but  their  knowl- 
edge lingers  in  the  sphere  of  automatic  determinism,  and  is  to 
them  as  the  push  and  pull  of  a  power  without  and  beyond 
them ;  and  their  apparent  discrimination  is  the  result  upon 


THE    UNDERSTANDING.  153 

them  of  this  propulsion.  The  dog  knows  his  master,  but  he 
does  not  know  him  as  master.  He  looks  to  him  for  food,  and 
even  protection ;  but  it  is  a  sensuous  knowledge  far  down  in 
the  region  of  sense-perception,  as  a  smell,  as  a  pleasing  or  a 
disagreeable  effect  of  heat,  or  light.  He  shows  evidences  of 
gratification  at  the  master's  presence  and  pines  and  mopes  in 
his  absence ;  but  it  is  probably  of  no  higher  character  than  is 
involved  in  his  drawing  near  the  fire  for  comfort,  or  withdraw- 
ing from  it  when  too  hot.  The  sight  of  a  stick,  if  it  has  been 
the  instrument  of  punishment  in  the  hands  of  the  master,  causes 
him  to  cringe ;  and  a  gun,  if  he  is  a  sporting  animal,  fills  him 
with  gladness.  But  of  pain  as  pain,  in  any  construed  conscious- 
ness, or  joy  as  an  emotion,  he  knows  nothing. 

The  whole  life  of  the  animal  is  largely,  if  not  wholly,  auto- 
matic. The  apparent  judgments  which  we  so  often  witness 
are  not  the  results  of  conscious  reflection,  but  of  the  prevalence 
of  the  strongest  impulsion  at  the  moment.  The  dog  is  far 
from  reaching  the  stage  of  conscious  personality.  There  is  no 
true  reasoning,  and  this  seems  to  be  the  necessary  conclusion 
upon  physiological  grounds.  Those  creatures  which  show  the 
highest  power  of  adapting  means  to  ends  are  those,  not  of 
advanced  brain  development,  but  of  the  lowest  order.  There 
is  no  comparison  between  the  community  life,  and  the  con- 
structive power  of  the  ant  or  the  bee,  and  that  of  the  horse 
or  dog ;  yet  the  differentiation  of  the  higher  nerve-cells  of  the 
brain  in  these  is  far  beyond  what  it  is  in  those. 

Pain  in  the  lower  animals  is  a  very  different  thing  from  what 
it  is  in  man.  There  being  no  conscious  personality,  and  no 
reflection,  there  can  be  no  self-pity,  and  no  construing  of  the 
physical  derangement,  which  is  properly  only  pain,  when  trans- 
lated into  thought.  They  show  all  the  effects  of  pain  as  we 
know  it,  but  so  does  one  often  under  the  influence  of  anaesthet- 
ics. The  extraction  of  a  tooth  under  chloroform  is  frequently 
accompanied  by  howls  of  apparent  agony  and  exclamations 


154  MECHANISM    AND    PERSONALITY, 

pitiful  to  hear;  but  the  dentist  goes  quietly  about  his  work 
with  no  emotion  or  sympathy,  because  he  knows  the  patient 
does  not  feel  it. 

If  the  animal  world  had  the  power  of  forming  judgments  and 
the  capacity  for  self-knowledge,  there  would  be  no  reason  why 
they  should  not  proceed  to  form  language  and  to  show  an 
advance  in  the  rational  scale.  It  is  not  from  the  lack  of  the 
physical  organs,  as  witness  the  parrot  and  all  that  class  of  birds ; 
but  it  may  be  seriously  questioned  whether  any  bird  ever 
attached  the  slightest  meaning  to  words,  though  as  clearly 
articulated  as  in  human  speech.  But  even  if  the  tones  of  the 
human  voice  could  not  be  simulated  by  the  dog,  for  example, 
language  could  as  certainly  be  composed  of  barks  and  howls. 

It  perhaps  will  be  urged  in  objection,  that  animals  do  com- 
municate with  each  other ;  —  and  undoubtedly  they  do  ;  and 
those,  let  it  be  remembered  again,  of  lowest  powers  do  it 
most  thoroughly.  But  this  is  not  language  in  the  human  sense, 
any  more  than  the  solicitations  of  appetite  or  the  reflex  action 
in  the  leg  of  a  decapitated  frog  are  the  results  of  thought.  It 
is  all  in  the  domain  of  sense,  meeting  with  perfect  response, 
but  not  through  the  construing  power. 

Again,  it  is  to  be  doubted  whether  any  animal  has  ever  been 
known  to  do  a  voluntary  act  in  which  judgment  proper  can  be 
discovered.  In  the  ape-tribe  we  should  expect  to  find  it  if  any- 
where, but  they  fail  to  .exhibit  it.  The  dog  or  the  ape  will 
freeze  to  death  before  either  of  them  will  replenish  a  fire.  The 
fuel  may  be  at  hand,  the  animal  may  have  seen  it  put  on  the 
fire  a  thousand  times,  may  have  actually  put  it  on  itself,  if  so 
taught,  and  yet  when  it  is  to  be  done  for  a  purpose,  the  animal 
never  rises  to  the  necessary  height.  If  putting  the  fuel  on  the 
fire  were  the  immediate  cause  of  the  heat,  they  doubtless 
would  do  it.  They  will  open  gates  of  intricate  construction, 
and  even  show  by  their  motions  that  they  want  their  masters 
to  do  acts  for  them  which  they  are  unable  to  perform ;  but 


THE    UNDERSTANDING,  155 

they  must  be  acts  which  carry,  or  seem  to  carry  the  end  with 
it.  A  dog  with  a  bit  of  meat  on  a  shelf  too  high  for  him  to 
reach  will  starve,  with  the  full  knowledge  that  the  food  is  there, 
before  he  will  push  a  chair  into  position  to  enable  him  to  reach 
it.  This  is  too  large  a  demand  upon  his  construing  power,  or, 
perhaps,  appeals  to  a  power  which  he  has  not.  It  may  be  well 
to  say,  however,  that  all  this  is  a  mere  question  of  fact,  and  that 
there  need  be  no  hesitancy  in  admitting,  if  the  facts  should 
warrant  it,  that  dumb  creatures  have  this  construing  or  concept- 
forming  power  in  at  least  a  rudimentary  form. 

This  logical  power  is  discoverable  in  the  lowest  orders  of 
men,  and  reaches,  in  ascending  stages  of  development,  to  the 
highest.  The  boor  or  the  savage  who  never  heard  the  word 
'  logic  '  is  a  logician,  inasmuch  as  he  forms  judgments,  and 
exercises  the  power  of  self-determination  in  the  light  of  con- 
scious reflection.  The  whole  world  went  on,  and  achieved 
astonishing  results  in  art,  in  literature,  and  in  architecture, 
waged  skilful  wars,  and  solved  high  problems  in  civil  polity, 
before  Aristotle  discovered,  and  laid  bare  to  the  conscious 
thought  of  man,  the  laws  of  this  mighty  instrumentality.  The 
highest  analytical  feat  ever  performed  by  the  wit  of  man,  per-, 
haps,  was  his  discovery  and  systematic  statement  of  the  laws 
of  logical  thinking.  Very  little  has  ever  been  added  to  the 
science  of  logic  since  it  came  full  fledged  from  the  hand  of  the 
Stagirite.  The  power  is  one  thing ;  the  explicit  consciousness 
is  quite  another. 

Though  we  can  but  glance  at  the  subject,  some  considera- 
tion of  the  principles  underlying  the  science  of  logic  is  abso- 
lutely necessary  to  understand  the  further  evolution  of  the 
knowledge-forming  process. 

An  argument  formally  stated  is  called  a  '  syllogism.'  It 
consists  of  three  propositions,  two  of  them  called  'premises,' 
and  the  third  the  '  conclusion.'  The  subject  of  the  conclusion, 
that  is,  the  concept  of  which  something  is  declared,  and  com- 


MECHANISM    AND    PERSONALITY. 

monly  standing  first,  is  called  the  ( minor  term  ' ;  the  predicate, 
or  that  which  is  declared  of  the  subject,  is  called  the  '  major 
term.'  One  of  the  premises  must  contain  the  major,  and  the 
other  the  minor  term,  and  they  are  called,  respectively,  the 
major  and  minor  premise.  The  third  concept  entering  the  argu- 
ment is  called  the  '  middle  term  '  and  must  enter  both  the 
premises.  The  middle  term  is  thus  the  common  ground  upon 
which  both  the  other  concepts  in  the  argument  must  stand 
wholly  or  in  part,  and  these  concepts  must  thus  agree,  in  so 
far  as  they  overlap  in  this  process. 

Let  us  take  a  simple  concrete  example  :  — 

All  animals  are  mortal  [major  premise]. 
All  men  are  animals  [minor  premise]. 
Therefore,  all  men  are  mortal  [conclusion]. 

In  the  major  premise  the  whole  class,  '  animals,'  is  declared 
to  fall  under  a  larger  notion,  'mortal'  (major  term),  and  in 
the  minor  premise  '  men  '  (minor  term)  is  declared  to  fall 
under  that  notion  which  is  itself  contained  in  the  major  term : 
it  follows,  therefore,  necessarily,  that  the  minor  is  contained  in 
the  major  term. 

This  may  be  made  readily  apparent  to  the  eye.  Take  three 
circles,  thus :  — 


The  largest  circle  is  the  major  term  (mortal),  and  contains 
the  middle  (animals),  and  this  contains  the  minor  (men)  ;  so 


THE    UNDERSTANDING.  157 

that  the  minor  term  is  necessarily  contained  in  the  major. 
This  is  a  necessity  of  thought,  and  may  be  expressed  generally 
thus  :  A  part  of  a  part  is  a  part  of  the  whole.  This  is  in  brief 
phrase  the  positive  side  of  what  is  known  as  the  Dictum  of 
Aristotle.  The  Dictum  itself — called  the  Dictum  de  omni  et 
nullo  —  may  be  thus  expressed  :  '  Whatever  is  predicated  (i.e. 
affirmed  or  denied)  universally  of  any  class  (i.e.  of  any  whole) 
may  be  also  predicated  of  any  part  of  that  class.' 

To  the  test  of  this  dictum,  all  deductive  reasoning  must  at 
last  submit ;  and  a  part  of  the  business  of  logic  is  to  show  how 
this  test  may  be  made  to  apply  in  all  the  possible  forms  an 
argument  may  assume. 

In  every  argument  there  are  two  things  to  be  noted,  the 
'  form  '  and  the  '  matter.'  By  the  form  is  meant  all  that  is  left 
after  the  content  of  the  concepts  is  removed,  the  concrete 
meaning  of  the  concepts  being  the  matter.  In  our  example, 
we  have  in  the  concept  '  men,'  a  fasciculus  of  knowledge  which 
has  grown  up  in  the  empirical  ego  out  of  a  multitude  of  experi- 
ences ;  and  so  in  the  other  two  concepts.  Now,  it  may  or 
may  not  be  true  that  '  all  animals  are  mortal ' ;  or  that  '  all 
men  are  animals.'  If  we  take  out  of  these  propositions  all  that 
is  contingent  (the  matter)  there  will  still  be  left  the  declara- 
tive element,  and  we  shall  have  '  Something  is  Something,'  or, 
'Anything  is  Anything.'  Let  A  be  the  symbol  of  anything, 
with  the  condition  that  it  shall  always  remain  the  same  when- 
ever it  may  appear  in  the  same  argument ;  and  B  and  C  be 
symbols  of  like  character.  Substituting  these  in  our  example 
above,  we  have  :  — 

All  A  is  B. 

All  C  is  A. 

Therefore,  all  C  is  B. 

We  have  now  eliminated  all  question  of  the  truth  or  falsity 
of  the  declaration  in  the  premises  depending  upon  the  matter 
of  the  concepts  themselves,  and  have  left  the  bare  form  of  the 
proposition. 


158  MECHANISM    AND    PERSONALITY. 

The  conclusion  now  not  only  follows  necessarily  from  the 
premises,  but  is  indisputably  true.  In  the  concrete  example, 
the  conclusion,  'All  men  are  mortal,'  followed  apodictically 
from  the  premises ;  but  might  nevertheless  be  false,  because 
one  or  other  of  the  premises  might  not,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  be 
true.  Thus  the  formal  syllogism  in  any  of  its  various  forms 
established  as  valid  by  the  science  of  pure  logic,  gives  indis- 
putable conclusions  ;  but  as  an  empty  form  establishes  nothing  : 
the  concepts  must  be  restored  in  the  argument  before  it  is  of 
any  practical  use. 

We  must  thus  have  in  every  real  argument  the  two  factors, 
form  and  matter.  The  conclusion  may  be  false,  either  from 
the  fact  that  its  particular  form  is  not  valid,  or  that  one  or 
both  of  the  premises  are  materially  false. 

Pure,  or  Formal  Logic  looks  only  to  the  form,  and  has 
nothing  to  do  with  the  matter.  The  truth  of  any  premise  is  a 
question  for  Practical  Logic;  and  at  this  door  steps  in  the 
whole  circle  of  the  sciences.  The  question  of  the  truth  or 
falsity  of  the  proposition,  '  All  men  are  mortal,'  can  only  be 
answered  by  the  science  of  biology.  So  in  any  proposition. 
Only  Astronomy  can  tell  us  whether  it  is  true  that  '  Jupiter  is 
still  in  a  semi-fluid  state  ' ;  and  we  shall  have  to  appeal  to 
Chemistry  to  know  the  truth  of  the  proposition,  '  Water  is 
composed  of  oxygen  and  hydrogen ' ;  and  so  of  all  questions 
depending  upon  experience. 

Now  syllogistic  reasoning  is  deductive  in  character ;  that  is, 
it  starts  with  a  sumption  (major  premise),  and  the  office  of  the 
ftf^-sumption  (minor  premise)  is  to  declare  that  a  certain 
subject  falls  under  that  sumption,  or  general  rule  ;  and  the  con- 
clusion follows  deductively.  We  thus  descend  from  the  gen- 
eral to  the  particular.  The  sciences  arrive  at  their  conclusions 
in  a  directly  contrary  way.  They  ascend  from  the  particular 
to  the  general.  They  begin  by  noting  a  fact,  and  then  another 
of  like  character,  and  so  on  until  finally  the  number  of  accord- 


THE    UNDERSTANDING.  159 

ant  facts  warrants  the  establishment  of  a  rule,  with  greater  or 
less  probability  as  to  its  universality.  This  is  called  Inductive 
reasoning. 

These  two  classes  of  the  reasoning  process  are  mutually  de- 
pendent. There  can  be  no  induction  without  a  precedent 
sumption ;  and  there  can  be  no  deduction  without  a  precedent 
sub-sumption.  Every  judgment  is  an  inchoate  syllogism.  Take 
for  example  the  declaration  :  Gold  is  yellow.  The  concept  of 
the  substance  called  '  gold '  must  be  compared  with  the  con- 
cept '  yellow/  and  it  must  be  seen  to  agree.  The  color  seen 
in  the  gold  is  not  the  old  or  ready-formed  concept  '  yellow '  in 
the  mind  ;  it  is  a  particular  or  individual  perception  which  the 
apperceptive  power  recognizes  as  agreeing  with  the  already 
subsisting  concept  yellow.  There  are  thus  present  all  the  ele- 
ments of  a  syllogism  ;  and  it  may  be  written  out  as  follows  :  — 

Whatever  modifies  light  thus  is  yellow ; 

Gold  has  this  property ; 

Ergo,  gold  is  yellow. 

No  proposition  can  be  made  which  will  not  fall  under  the 
same  head.  Facts  are  simply  propositions,  and  therefore  no 
fact  can  be  stated  which  has  not  a  syllogism  lurking  under  it ; 
and  thus  it  is  that  the  very  elements  of  Inductive  conclusions 
proceed  from  the  principle  of  deduction. 

But  it  will  be  asked  :  How  then  is  the  first  fact  of  knowledge 
—  the  first  element  of  the  first  concept  had  ?  I  do  not  know 
that  it  would  imperil  one's  reputation  disastrously  if  one  should 
frankly  confess  that  one  does  not  know.  It  would  only  go 
along  with  the  answer  to  the  question  as  to  whence  protoplasm 
comes,  or  whence  anything  is.  The  business  of  constructing 
the  world  out  of  nothing  is  not  in  especially  high  favor  at  this 
time  ;  and  we  may  respectfully  decline  to  attempt  it. 

An  answer  may  be  given,  however,  in  a  way  which  without 
really  explaining  anything,  carries  us  back  as  far  as  it  is  pos- 
sible to  go,  and  as  far  as  we  ought  to  want  to  go.  It  is 


l6o  MECHANISM   AND   PERSONALITY. 

simply  this :  Man  is,  by  reason  of  his  nature,  a  discoverer  of 
likenesses  and  differences,  and  is  thus  an  inchoate  logician, 
and  must  begin  to  know  from  the  first  moment  of  his  conscious 
existence.  Thus  we  see  again  that  logic  as  an  act  precedes  by 
an  incalculable  span '  the  science  or  systematic  knowledge  of 
logic. 

That  Deduction  is  in  need  of  the  help  of  Induction  is  freely 
admitted  on  all  sides.  Even  in  those  cases  where  the  premises 
are  declarations  of  rational  or  intuitive  truths,  the  Inductive 
element  must  be  admitted,  for  no  rational  or  necessary  truth 
can  be  freed  from  an  empirical  element  in  the  process  of  recog- 
nizing its  axiomatic  or  universal  character. 

In  these  two  much  discussed  methods  of  reasoning,  we  seem 
to  have  but  the  expansion  of  the  necessarily  reciprocal  phases 
of  all  knowing,  analysis  and  synthesis.  These  we  have  seen 
to  be  mutually  necessary  to  each  other.  In  them  we  found 
the  time-worn  problem  of  '  the  one  and  the  many ' ;  and  here 
we  come  upon  it  face  to  face  once  more.  Of  the  principle  of 
Induction  we  shall  see  something  further  as  we  go  on. 

We  have  spoken  only  of  categorical  syllogisms,  —  that  is  to 
say,  of  syllogisms  in  which  the  propositions  fall  under  one  or 
other  of  the  four  possible  forms  of  unconditional  or  categorical 
propositions :  All  A  is  B,  No  A  is  B,  Some  A  is  B,  and  Some  A 
is  not  B.  In  each  of  these  forms  there  is  simple  affirmation  or 
denial.  But  there  are  three  other  possible  forms  which  propo- 
sitions may  assume.  They  are  all  conditional  in  character : 
the  simple  conditional,  If  A  is,  B  is  ;  the  disjunctive,  A  is  either 
B  or  C  ;  and  the  dilemmatic,  If  A  is,  B  is  either  C  or  D.  The 
last,  it  will  be  seen,  is  a  combination  of  the  other  two.  It  is 
not  necessary  for  our  purpose  to  enter  upon  any  discussion  of 
conditional  syllogisms.  The  fundamental  principle  upon  which 
they  depend  will  sufficiently  appear  as  we  proceed. 


THE    PURE    REASON.  l6l 

CHAPTER   XVI. 

THE   PURE   REASON. 

Intuitive  knowledge.  Conditions  of  explicit  thought.  Controversy 
about  '  Innate  Ideas.'  Experimental  knowledge.  Law  of  Identity.  Law 
of  Contradiction.  Excluded  middle.  Its  questionable  use  in  certain 
cases.  Hamilton.  Sufficient  Reason.  Causality.  Hume.  Locke.  Leib- 
nitz. The  Laws  of  Motion.  All  science  based  upon  necessary  truths. 

IN  all  processes  of  reasoning  we  deal  with  relations,  or  the 
bearing  of  one  notion  upon  another.  This  is  the  domain 
of  the  understanding  proper.  It  does  not,  in  its  practical  opera- 
tions, transcend  the  sphere  of  the  limited,  the  conditioned,  the 
finite.  But  relations  presuppose  a  reality  which  underlies 
them,  —  a  ground  which  enables  them  to  be.  The  under- 
standing takes  things  and  events  as  they  are  presented  to  it ; 
compares,  arranges,  and  concludes,  without  necessarily  asking 
why  they  are,  or  whence  they  come.  We  now  seek  the  ground 
which  supports  the  operations  of  the  understanding. 

It  must  be  apparent  that  all  along  through  the  preceding 
inquiry  touching  cognition  there  has  always  been  a.  somewhat 
taken  for  granted.  Even  at  the  very  threshold  of  animate  ex- 
istence we  found  an  element  furnished  to  our  hand,  and  with- 
out which  science  could  take  no  step  towards  tracing  the 
development  of  even  the  bodily  mechanism.  In  the  unit-mass 
of  protoplasm,  we  found  that  we  were  compelled  to  recognize 
as  pre-existing,  the  power  of  building  up,  or  converting  dead 
food  into  the  living  unit-mass  —  a  power  of  self-movement, 
a  capacity  of  responding  to  external  stimuli  through  irritability 
or  sensitiveness.  In  other  words,  we  found  life  manifesting 
itself  as  a  precedent  condition. 


l62  MECHANISM    AND    PERSONALITY. 

This  life  with  all  that  it  involves,  that  is  to  say,  all  that  is 
evolved  through  it,  is  a  free  gift.  Although  the  effort  has  been 
persistently  and  repeatedly  made,  man  has  not  been  able  to 
push  this  vital  factor  back  into  mere  matter,  or  evolve  it  from 
dead  matter.  If  it  could  be  so  evolved,  the  case  would  not  be 
really  different,  since  even  then  it  would  be  only  evolved ;  and 
the  beginning,  in  the  sense  of  the  ultimate,  would  not  have 
been  reached,  but  only  pushed  back  one  further  stage.  Mat- 
ter, instinct  with  life,  could  not  be  called  dead,  and  even  were 
it  dead,  the  question  would  still  obtrude  itself:  whence  came 
this  new  factor  which  seizes  upon  and  converts  the  material 
factor  to  its  uses  ? 

It  is,  then,  manifestly  impossible  for  a  finite  being  to  start 
without  somewhat  freely  and  absolutely  given.  But  the  origi- 
nal powers  and  capacities  which  the  physicist  is  compelled  to 
recognize  as  ready  at  hand  in  the  protoplasmic  mass  are  only  the 
beginning  of  the  gratuitously  furnished  capital  which  he  is  com- 
pelled to  accept  all  along  the  way  upward  to  man.  He  is  com- 
pelled to  recognize  constantly  emerging  phenomena  of  which 
he  is  not  at  all  in  the  secret.  He  cannot  bridge  the  chasm 
between  motion  and  sensation ;  he  cannot  point  out  even  the 
direction  in  which  thought  lies  from  sensation,  nor  will  from 
either.  He  finds  himself  in  the  light  of  consciousness,  but  he 
does  not  know  when  it  came  to  him,  nor  how ;  he  does  not, 
and  cannot,  see  it  in  another,  and  is  as  utterly  in  the  dark  as  to 
what  touch  it  has  with  the  nerve-centres  in  the  cortex  of  the 
brain,  as  our  fathers  were  of  its  nature  when  they  supposed  it 
to  reside  in  the  pineal  gland,  or  to  exist  independently  of  the 
body.  It  must  be  accepted  as  a  revelation,  happily  bestowed 
at  the  auspicious  juncture,  no  matter  how  far  it  may  be  made 
dependent,  nor  how  perfectly  synchronous  with  any  stage  of 
physiological  development. 

Now,  since  this  is  manifestly  true,  it  is  in  no  wise  more  won- 
derful that  the  conscious  life  should  come  ready  furnished  with 


THE    PURE    REASON.  163 

laws  of  its  being,  than  that  the  physical  world  should  come  to 
us  with  laws  written  in  and  through  it.  If  it  be  answered  that 
physical  nature  made  its  own  laws,  we  ask :  How  do  you 
know?  They  are  unquestionably  here,  but  nobody  ever  saw 
them  come,  and  nobody  knows  what  they  are  now  that  we  see 
them.  Who  presumes  to  know  what  energy  is?  or  chemical 
affinity  ?  or  motion  ? 

This  objection,  then,  is  but  an  assertion  without  possible 
proof,  and,  as  such,  may  be  passed.  But  if  it  had  all  proof, 
the  fact  of  the  prior  existence  of  these  laws  of  the  material 
world,  as  the  reason  and  explanation  of  physical  phenomena, 
will  not  be  disputed  by  any. 

In  like  way  the  actual  existence  of  the  laws  of  cognition  can- 
not be  disputed,  nor  their  prior  existence  denied  as  the  suffi- 
cient reason  for  the  phenomena  of  thought.  Whether  these 
laws  made  themselves,  is  not  the  question.  It  is,  Are  they 
here?  and  are  they  logically  prior  to  the  development  of 
knowledge  ? 

Again,  the  question  is  not  when  they  were  first  known  to  be 
dominating  the  knowledge-forming  process.  They  might  never 
be  known,  and  yet  be  exercising  their  functions ;  just  as  gravi- 
tation did  its  work  through  countless  ages,  before  man  knew 
anything  about  it. 

We  have  been  stealthily  approaching,  in  the  preceding  re- 
flections, a  venerable  controversy ;  and  we  are  now  fairly  on  it. 
It  is  the  question  as  to  whether  there  are  any  '  innate  ideas ' 
in  the  personality  or  not.  In  the  first  place,  the  name  is  an 
unfortunate  one,  prejudicing  the  question  in  the  negative  at 
the  start.  It  may  be  safely  asserted  that  nobody,  fairly  entitled 
to  an  opinion,  holds,  and  that  nobody,  following  Leibnitz  in 
modern  times,  ever  held,  that  the  personality  begins  its  work  of 
gathering  knowledge  with  a  set  of  ready-made  ideas  in  the 
mind  ;  somewhat  as  a  clothier  might  be  supposed  to  commence 
business,  with  a  lot  of  made-up  garments  in  stock  !  That  there 


164  MECHANISM    AND    PERSONALITY. 

are  any  innate  ideas  in  this  sense,  no  one  fairly  informed  in  the 
matter  would  presume  to  assert.  To  return,  then,  to  the  line 
we  were  pursuing  :  in  the  course  of  the  development  of  knowl- 
edge, after  the  manner  we  have  briefly  sketched,  there  are  dis- 
covered certain  laws  which  govern  psychical  action.  These  are 
facts  of  the  self :  and  they  are  not  derived  from  the  external 
world.  Let  it  be  carefully  borne  in  mind  that  there  is  no  inten- 
tion in  using  the  word  '  derived  '  to  deny  that  experience  of  the 
external  world  is  the  occasion  of  their  becoming  known  to  the 
self.  If  one  should  find  one's  self  in  a  perfectly  dark  room 
full  of  divers  mechanisms,  one  would  see  nothing  of  them ;  but 
if  a  light  should  be  struck,  they  would  be  immediately  revealed. 
The  light  would  be  the  occasion  or  medium  of  their  discovery, 
but  not  the  cause.  So  of  these  original  truths  which  belong  to 
the  self.  Experience  is  the  torch  through  which  they  are 
revealed  to  cognition,  as  well  as  the  material  upon  which  they 
operate.  They  would  remain  potentially  in  the  mind  forever, 
but  could  never  become  known  to  the  self  if  no  stimuli  from 
the  external  world  were  ever  presented  to  rouse  our  psychologi- 
cal energies.  There  never  could  be  any  empirical  ego ;  and  so 
the  self  would  never  know  that  it  had  in  it  the  potentialities  of 
sensibility  and  cognition,  and  the  power  of  self-determination. 

But,  on  the  other  hand,  no  matter  what  might  be  the  number 
and  character  of  the  external  stimuli,  and  no  matter  how  con- 
tinuously they  might  be  applied,  there  would  be  no  sort  of 
experience  if  the  psychological  factor  of  the  self  were  not 
present.  It  would  be  like  one  ringing  at  the  door-bell  of  an 
empty  house.  There  would  be  nobody  at  home,  and  no 
response.  Thus,  experience  itself  is  absolutely  in  need  of  a 
conscious  presence  to  lift  its  physical  basis  from  the  dead 
world  of  mere  motion  and  mass,  into  the  life-world,  before  it 
can  be  experienced  at  all. 

Let  us  look  at  this  a  moment  further.  Take  the  illustration 
above,  of  the  door-bell  and  the  empty  house.  Suppose  the 


THE    PURE    REASON.  165 

ringing  from  without  should  continue,  and  that  any  number  of 
the  simplest,  or  the  most  intricate  signals  were  made  with 
voice,  or  in  any  other  way  :  what  would  be  the  result  within  ? 
The  question  hardly  needs  answer.  If  there  were  on  the 
inside,  plastic  substances  and  sensitized  plates  to  record  all 
pressures  and  all  effects  of  light,  what  would  there  be  at  last 
within,  but  so  many  pressures  unfelt,  and  so  many  pictures 
unseen?  There  they  might  remain  forever  meaningless  and 
dead.  But  now  introduce  an  occupant.  Those  sounds  and 
signals  would  become  at  once  what  they  were  not  before. 
They  would  have  meaning  read  into  them  by  personality ;  they 
would  become  the  physical  basis  of  thought  and  feeling. 

This  illustration,  if  not  made  '  to  go  on  all  fours,'  is  a  fair 
representation  of  the  relative  action  of  the  physical  and  psy- 
chological factors  in  the  simplest  possible  act  of  experience  or 
sense-perception.  The  caution  is  especially  intended  to  guard 
against  the  notion  of  the  personality  as  shut  up,  or  in  any  wise 
enclosed  in  the  brain,  or  in  any  part  of  the  body.  As  we  have 
seen  already  there  is  no  possibility  of  giving  it  a  local  habitat. 

Now  it  seems  clear  that  the  self  has  the  inherent  power  of 
giving  to  molecular  motions  one  thing  which  they  had  not  them- 
selves, and  that  is  meaning.  It  has  the  power  of  composing  or 
uniting  separate  and  several  molecular  acts  into  ideal  wholes. 
But  this  is  not  done  pell-mell  and  indiscriminately ;  but  with 
method  and  purpose.  It  must,  therefore,  be  granted  the  power 
of  discovering  likeness  and  difference ;  and  this  simple  fact 
conceded,  the  gulf  is  passed  between  mere  mechanism  and 
personality ;  —  over  the  gulf  which  has  no  bridge  in  thought, 
thought  passes  and  repasses  continually  in  fact. 

It  requires  a  little  patient  thought  for  us,  accustomed  all  our 
lives  to  the  matter-of-course  use  of  this  power,  to  see  at  first 
that  there  is  anything  to  wonder  at  in  such  an  elementary 
energy.  But  the  more  one  thinks  about  it,  the  more  impos- 
sible it  becomes  to  say  why  A  is  A.  One  is  disposed  to  ex- 


1 66  MECHANISM    AND    PERSONALITY. 

claim,  with  some  feeling  of  contempt :  '  Because  it  is.'  The 
answer  is  philosophically  correct ;  but  where  does  the  *  because ' 
come  in  ?  This  word  implies  that  we  discover  a  reason ;  but 
if  so,  what  is  it  ?  In  our  scorn  we  may  say  again  :  '  It  has  to 
be.'  Yes;  but  why?  Any  number  of  varying  forms  of  assev- 
eration may  be  tried  in  turn,  but  no  one  of  them  will  advance 
us  one  step  further  towards  an  explanation.  There  is  no 
reason,  except  this  simplest  of  all,  It  is.  The  difficulty  in  the 
case  arises  from  its  very  simplicity  and  obviousness.  We  are 
compelled  to  see  that  a  thing  is  itself,  and  that  is  the  beginning 
and  end  of  all  efforts  at  explanation  or  comprehension  of  the 
fact.  This  is  the  first  fundamental  principle  of  all  knowing. 
It  is  called  the  Law  of  Identity.  It  is  certainly  not  derived 
from  anything,  because  it  is  not  separable  into  any  possible 
elements ;  and  it  does  not  come  to  us  through  (i.e.  is  not 
acquired  by)  experience,  since  it  is  a  condition  precedent,  in 
the  first  and  simplest  act  of  experience. 

The  principle  of  difference,  or  unlikeness  —  called  the  Law 
of  Contradiction,  is  equally  obvious  and  necessary.  To  say 
that  A  is  not  non-A  (assuming  of  course  that  one  first  under- 
stands the  use  of  such  an  abstract  formula)  needs  no  reflection 
and  no  instruction.  It  is,  however,  as  the  negation  of  the  law 
of  identity,  dependent  upon  it.  In  strictness,  identity  and 
difference  are  not  two  distinct  and  several  principles,  but  are 
simply  the  two  indissoluble  phases  of  the  one  act  of  limitation. 
Likeness  is  inconceivable  without  its  correlation,  unlikeness; 
and  the  converse.  But  identity  can  be  rightly  called  the 
positive,  and  difference  the  negative  phase,  since  a  thing 
cannot  be  '  othered  '  —  as  the  Hegelians  say  —  until  one,  in 
some  sort  at  least,  identifies  it  as  somewhat  to  be  othered. 
The  position  of  Fichte  is  indisputable,  that  the  ego  could  never 
know  itself  as  ego,  if  it  were  not  that  it  finds  itself  limited  by 
the  non-ego.  The  negative  character  of  difference  seems 
equally  clear,  since  no  aggregation  of  mere  differences  would 
give  '  thing  '  a  content. 


THE   PURE   REASON.  1 67 

Again,  of  two  contradictories,  —  that  is  to  say,  two  concepts 
or  judgments,  such  that  they,  taken  together,  comprise  all 
being,  the  affirmation  of  either  absolutely  denies  the  other; 
and  the  denial  of  either  necessarily  affirms  the  other :  thus  A 
and  non-A  are  contradictories,  since  non-A  comprises  what- 
ever there  is  in  the  universe  not  found  in  A ;  and  the  converse. 
It  is  obvious  that  there  is  no  middle  ground  between  them ; 
and  this  absolute  exclusion  is  the  third  fundamental  truth  of 
logic,  called  the  Law  of  Excluded  Middle. 

Now,  this  doctrine  of  '  Excluded  Middle,'  while  undoubtedly 
valid  in  itself,  is  easily  susceptible  of  abuse  in  practice ;  and 
has  been  often  used  to  false  ends.  It  is  necessary  that  the 
antithesis  shall  be  certainly  established  before  an  argument  is 
based  upon  it.  Even  as  great  a  logician  as  Sir  William  Hamil- 
ton has  failed,  it  should  seem,  in  his  use  of  it.  In  his  "  Phi- 
losophy of  the  Conditioned,"  he  uses  the  doctrine  of  Excluded 
Middle  with  respect  to  Space  and  Time.  Thus  :  Space  is 
either  limited  or  unlimited.  It  is  not  limited,  therefore  it  is 
unlimited.  But  there  is  grave  doubt  as  to  whether  it  is  either 
one  or  the  other,  —  many  of  the  ablest  philosophers  holding 
that  space  is  not  an  objective  entity  at  all,  but  is  purely  sub- 
jective. But  to  make  the  point  more  obvious,  let  us  take  a 
manifest  absurdity,  thus  :  Mercy  is  either  animate  or  inanimate. 
Suppose  one  could  prove  that  it  is  not  alive  :  are  we  therefore 
shut  up  to  the  conclusion  that  it  is  dead  ?  If  I  may  so  say,  the 
doctrine  of  Excluded  Middle  is  a  mill,  but  one  must  be  sure 
of  what  is  put  into  the  hopper  before  one  can  be  certain  of 
what  is  ground  out.  Great  circumspection  is  necessary  when- 
ever one  attempts  to  put  the  Infinite,  the  Absolute,  the  Naught, 
the  Ultimate,  in  any  form  through  any  sort  of  logic-mill ;  and 
it  is  not  surprising  that  queer  grists  have  been  ground  out,  from 
time  to  time,  by  those  who  have  flattered  themselves  that  they 
had  emptied  one  or  more  measures  of  these  transcendental  con- 
cepts into  the  hopper.  It  is  not  a  mere  figure  of  speech  to 


l68  MECHANISM   AND    PERSONALITY. 

call  logic  a  mill ;  for  it  is,  in  itself,  as  much  a  piece  of  dead 
mechanism  as  a  corn-mill  or  a  sewing-machine. 

Again,  whenever  a  change  takes  place  which  we  recognize 
by  the  law  of  difference  or  contradiction  —  whenever  a  thing 
begins  to  be  or  become,  or  an  event  happens,  we,  by  a  neces- 
sary law  of  the  self,  think  there  must  be  some  reason  or  cause 
which  produces  such  change  or  event.  This  principle  of  causal 
dependence  is  the  fourth  fundamental  law  of  logic,  called  the 
'  Law  of  Sufficient  Reason' 

The  question  as  to  how  man  gets  hold  of  the  notion  of  cause 
has  been  long  a  subject  of  earnest  controversy.  Hume  occu- 
pies a  conspicuous  position  in  the  discussion  —  indeed,  the 
battle  seems  to  have  been  waged  about  him  as  \hepoint  (Tappui. 
It  was  he  who,  as  an  antagonist,  set  the  Scotch  school  upon 
its  mettle;  and  the  great  philosopher  of  Konigsberg  tells  us 
that  it  was  Hume  who  first  woke  him  to  the  fray.  It  is  not  my 
purpose  to  follow  the  history  of  the  contention,  or  to  attempt 
any  detailed  treatment  of  the  subject ;  but  the  matter  is  too 
important  to  pass  in  silence.  David  Hume  and  his  followers, 
James  and  John  Stuart  Mill,  Herbert  Spencer,  and  the  whole 
school  of  empiricists,  declare  that  there  are  no  original  or  nec- 
essary notions  in  the  mind ;  but  that  all  knowledge  is  derived 
from  without  through  experience.  The  reader  will  readily  per- 
ceive from  what  has  gone  before,  that  in  one  sense  the  present 
writer  has  no  objections  to  this  statement.  "  Nihil  est  in  in- 
tellectu,  quod  non  fuerit  in  sensu  "  is  certainly  true,  if  it  be 
understood  in  the  light  of  the  added  phrase  of -Leibnitz  "  prae- 
ter  intellectum  ipsum"  Manifestly  there  could  never  be  any 
material  of  thought  in  the  mind  if  the  senses  did  not  do  their 
office ;  but,  as  we  have  seen,  if  there  were  no  mind  to  give  it 
meaning,  there  would  still  be  no  thought. 

This  carries  us  back  to  the  question  as  to  whether  the  psy- 
chical nature  of  man  has  laws  which  pervade  it,  or,  in  other 
words,  whether  it  has  a  nature  at  all. 


THE    PURE    REASON.  169 

Now  Locke,  who  is  commonly  regarded  as  the  father  of 
modern  empiricism  (though  both  Gassendi  and  Hobbes  must 
have  precedence  in  time),  is  perfectly  clear,  though  not  always 
consistent  in  his  recognition  of  the  native  powers  of  the  mind. 
Almost  at  the  beginning  of  his  famous  essay,  in  speaking  of 
maxims,  he  declares  that  they  are  not  founded  upon  reasoning, 
"  for  all  reasoning  is  search,  and  casting  about,  and  requires 
pains  and  application ;  and  how  can  it,  with  any  tolerable 
sense,  be  supposed  that  what  was  imprinted  by  nature,  as  the 
foundation  and  guide  of  our  reason,  should  need  the  use  of 
reason  to  discover  it?"  Although  there  is  a  confusion  here 
according  to  modern  terminology  in  using  '  reason '  and  '  rea- 
soning '  as  interchangeable,  his  meaning  is  that  the  process  of 
reasoning  must  find  a  foundation  in  that  which  '  was  imprinted 
by  nature,'  and  which  is  now  called  the  Pure  Reason.  In  the 
fourth  book  of  the  essay  there  is  constant  recognition  of  this 
truth.  He  says  :  "  If  we  will  reflect  on  our  own  ways  of  think- 
ing, we  shall  find  that  sometimes  the  mind  perceives  the  agree- 
ment or  disagreement  of  two  ideas  immediately  by  themselves, 
without  the  intervention  of  any  other  :  and  this,  I  think,  may  be 
called  intuitive  knowledge.  For  in  this  the  mind  is  at  no  pains 
of  proving  or  examining,  but  perceives  the  truth,  as  the  eye  doth 
light,  only  by  being  directed  towards  it.  Thus  the  mind  per- 
ceives that  white  is  not  black,  that  a  circle  is  not  a  triangle,  that 
three  are  more  than  two,  and  equal  to  one  and  two.  Such  kind 
of  truths  the  mind  perceives  at  the  first  sight  of  the  ideas  to- 
gether, by  bare  intuition,  without  the  intervention  of  any  other 
idea ;  and  this  kind  of  knowledge  is  the  clearest  and  most  cer- 
tain that  human  frailty  is  capable  of.  This  part  of  knowledge 
is  irresistible,  and  like  bright  sunshine,  forces  itself  immedi- 
ately to  be  perceived,  as  soon  as  ever  the  mind  turns  its  view 
that  way ;  and  leaves  no  room  for  hesitation,  doubt,  or  exami- 
nation, but  the  mind  is  presently  filled  with  the  clear  light  of  it. 
It  is  on  this  intuition  that  depends  all  the  certainty  and  evi- 


I7O  MECHANISM   AND    PERSONALITY. 

dence  of  all  our  knowledge ;  which  certainty  every  one  finds 
to  be  so  great,  that  he  cannot  imagine,  and  therefore  not  re- 
quire, a  greater  :  for  a  man  cannot  conceive  himself  capable  of 
greater  certainty,  than  to  know  that  any  idea  in  his  mind  is 
such  as  he  perceives  it  to  be ;  and  that  two  ideas,  wherein  he 
perceives  a  difference,  are  different,  and  not  precisely  the  same. 
He  that  demands  a  greater  certainty  than  this,  demands  he 
knows  not  what,  and  shows  only  that  he  has  a  mind  to  be  a 
skeptic,  without  being  able  to  be  so.  Certainty  depends  so 
wholly  on  this  intuition,  that  in  the  next  degree  of  knowledge, 
which  I  call  demonstration,  this  intuition  is  necessary  in  all  the 
connections  of  the  intermediate  ideas,  without  which  we  can- 
not attain  knowledge  and  certainty." 

Many  other  passages  could  be  quoted  to  the  same  end,  but 
it  is  unnecessary.  The  confusion  which  seems  to  lie  at  the 
bottom  of  the  endless  discussion  on  the  subject  of  innate  ideas 
is  the  failure  to  distinguish  between  the  native  potency  of  the 
personality  to  discover  necessary  truths  as  occasion  requires, 
and  an  explicit  notion  of  such  truths  already  subsisting  in  the 
mind  previous  to  any  possible  experience.  In  this  later  sense, 
as  Locke  and  Hume  and  all  that  school  contend,  there  are  no 
innate  ideas ;  and  this  is  only  to  say  what  a  far  greater  than 
any  one  of  them  declared  at  the  beginning  of  the  controversy, 
—  Gottfried  Wilhelm  Leibnitz. 

Hume  recognizes  the  inherent  power  of  the  mind  to  discover 
necessary  truths  as  clearly  as  his  great  predecessor,  Locke. 
"  The  mind  of  man  is  so  formed  by  nature,"  that  it  sees  and 
feels  so  and  so ;  the  belief  that  heat  and  cold  will  follow  con- 
tact with  flame  and  snow  "  is  the  necessary  result  of  placing 
the  mind  in  such  circumstances.  It  is  an  operation  of  the 
soul,  when  we  are  so  situated,  as  unavoidable  as  to  feel  the 
passion  of  love,  when  we  receive  benefits ;  or  hatred,  when  we 
meet  with  injuries.  All  these  operations  are  a  species  of  natu- 
ral instincts,  which  no  reasoning  or  process  of  the  thought  and 


THE   PURE   REASON.  1^1 

understanding  is  able  either  to  produce  or  to  prevent."  Again, 
"  Reason  is  nothing  but  a  wonderful  and  unintelligible  instinct 
in  our  souls,  which  carries  us  along  a  certain  train  of  ideas,  and 
endows  them  with  particular  qualities,  according  to  their  par- 
ticular situations  and  relations."  Speaking  of  mathematical 
truths  he  says  :  "  Propositions  of  this  kind  are  discoverable  by 
the  mere  operations  of  thought,  without  dependence  on  what 
is  anywhere  existent  in  the  universe.  Though  there  never  were 
a  circle  or  a  triangle  in  nature,  the  truths  demonstrated  by 
Euclid  would  forever  retain  their  certainty  and  evidence." 

Hume  addresses  himself  especially  to  the  question  of  cau- 
sation, contending  that  all  that  experience  reveals  in  two  percep- 
tions which  appear  to  have  a  causal  nexus  is  their  succession,  — 
that  "the  mind  never  perceives  any  real  connection  among 
distinct  existences,"  i.e.  never  sees  the  nexus  between  them  ; 
and  I  fancy  nobody  who  has  really  reflected  upon  the  matter 
thinks  he  can.  The  point  of  the  difficulty  seems  to  be  just 
here,  and  is  precisely  the  same  we  saw  a  few  pages  back  in  the 
illustration  of  the  door-bell.  There  would  be  nothing  but  suc- 
cession (and  even  that  would  not  be  perceived,  if  the  perceiver 
be  not  granted),  and  these  successive  existences  could  never 
have  any  thought-nexus  except  for  the  unifying  power  of  the 
thinker.  It  is  just  this  power  which  discovers  itself  to  us  in 
attention,  and  in  every  conative  act.  When  we  have  got  far 
enough  to  formulate  the  thought,  '  every  event  must  have  a 
cause,'  this  ideally-real  nexus  has  risen  up  in  us  as  an  object  of 
knowledge,  and  we  cannot  banish  it.  We  then  see  that  if  a 
thing  be  let  alone,  it  will  continue  to  be  just  where  and  just 
what  it  is. 

Now  Hume  saw  this  distinctly,  and  expressed  it  unequivo- 
cally. "Upon  the  whole,"  he  says,  "necessity  is  something 
that  exists  in  the  mind,  not  in  objects ;  nor  is  it  possible  for  us 
ever  to  form  the  most  distant  idea  of  it,  considered  as  a 
quality  in  bodies."  Again :  "  As  the  necessity,  which  makes 


172  MECHANISM   AND    PERSONALITY. 

two  times  two  equal  to  four,  or  three  angles  of  a  triangle  equal 
to  two  right  ones,  lies  only  in  the  understanding,  by  which  we 
consider  and  compare  these  ideas,  in  like  manner,  the  neces- 
sity of  power,  which  unites  causes  and  effects,  lies  in  the  deter- 
mination of  the  mind  to  pass  from  the  one  to  the  other."  This 
is  found  in  his  "Treatise  of  Human  Nature."  In  his  more 
mature  work,  the  "  Inquiry  concerning  Human  Understand- 
ing," which  he  expressly  desires  to  supersede  'that  juvenile 
work,'  he  makes  the  following  emphatic  statement :  "  It  is 
universally  allowed,  that  matter,  in  all  its  operations,  is  actuated 
by  a  necessary  force,  and  that  every  natural  effect  is  so  pre- 
cisely determined  by  the  energy  of  its  cause,  that  no  other 
effect,  in  such  particular  circumstances,  could  possibly  have 
resulted  from  it.  The  degree  and  direction  of  every  motive  is, 
by  the  laws  of  nature,  prescribed  with  such  exactness,  that  a 
living  creature  may  as  soon  arise  from  the  shock  of  two  bodies, 
as  motion,  in  any  other  degree  or  direction,  than  what  is  actu- 
ally produced  by  it." 

He  does  not  consider  that  there  is  any  conflict  between  these 
statements,  but  it  is  interesting  to  note  that  he  avows  that  there 
is  a  causal  necessity  in  the  understanding,  and  an  equally  cer- 
tain causal  nexus  in  the  material  world.  His  point  is  that 
while  this  is  true,  the  fact  of  this  causal  certainty  in  the  objec- 
tive world  is  established  as  a  fact  in  the  understanding  and  is 
due  to  experience ;  with  which  we  have  no  quarrel,  so  long  as 
it  is  borne  in  mind  that  experience  is  but  the  occasion  of  the 
discovery  in  consciousness  of  this  necessary  law  of  personality. 
That  this  characteristic  of  mental  necessity  could  not  be  derived 
from  an  accumulation  of  mere  experiences  needs  no  better 
witness  than  Hume  himself.  He  says  :  "  Matters  of  fact,  which 
are  the  second  objects  of  human  reason,  are  not  ascertained 
in  the  same  manner  [as  mathematical  truths]  ;  nor  is  our  evi- 
dence of  their  truth,  however  great,  of  a  like  nature  with  the 
foregoing.  The  contrary  of  every  matter  of  fact  is  still  pos- 


THE    PURE    REASON.  173 

sible,  because  it  can  never  imply  a  contradiction,  and  is  con- 
ceived by  the  mind  with  the  same  facility  and  distinctness,  as 
if  ever  so  conformable  to  reality.  '  That  the  sun  will  not  rise 
to-morrow,'  is  no  less  intelligible  a  proposition,  and  implies  no 
more  contradiction,  than  the  affirmative,  '  that  it  will  rise.' 
We  should  in  vain,  therefore,  attempt  to  demonstrate  its  false- 
hood. Were  it  demonstrably  false,  it  would  imply  a  contra- 
diction, and  could  never  be  distinctly  conceived  by  the  mind." 

Now  this  notion  of  cause  has  just  this  characteristic,  that  its 
contradictory  is  absolutely  unthinkable,  and  upon  it  the  whole 
magnificent  fabric  of  science  rests.  Mechanical  action  is,  as 
we  have  abundantly  seen,  the  final  test  of  all  scientific  research. 
But  the  whole  doctrine  of  mechanics  rests  upon  the  first  of 
the  three  Laws  of  Newton,  the  second  and  third  hanging 
upon  the  first.  That  law  is  a  pure  metaphysical  statement, 
without  the  slightest  possible  experience  to  support  it,  and  with 
all  experience  against  it.  It  is, '  Every  body  continues  in  a  state 
of  rest,  or  of  uniform  motion  in  a  straight  line,  except  in  so  far 
as  it  is  compelled  by  force  to  change  that  state.'  But  did  any 
one  ever  see  a  body  moving  in  a  straight  line  with  uniform 
velocity  ?  There  is  no  such  thing  as  a  straight  line,  and  prob- 
ably by  no  possible  contrivance  could  a  body  be  made  to  move 
accurately  in  a  straight  line.  A  body  falling  under  the  action 
of  gravitation  does  not  describe  a  straight  line,  but  one  of  the 
conic  curves,  and  the  equation  of  a  projectile  only  becomes 
that  of  a  right  line  (a  particular  case  of  a  parabola)  under 
suppositions  which  never  can  be  true. 

Is  not  science  with  unbroken  voice  assuring  us  that  there  is 
no  such  thing  as  actual  rest  in  the  universe,  and  that  there  is 
no  such  thing  as  unimpeded  motion?  Who,  then,  ever  had 
experience  of  either  the  one  or  the  other?  And  yet,  who  that 
understands  the  proposition  fails  to  see  that  its  contradictory  is 
unthinkable?  It  is  the  law  of  persistence.  A  thing  cannot 


MECHANISM   AND   PERSONALITY. 

take  on  a  new  state  unless  there  be  somewhat  to  compel  it ; 
that  is,  there  must  be  a  cause,  or  there  will  be  no  change. 

The  second  law  declares  that  '  change  of  motion  takes  place 
in  the  straight  line  in  which  the  force  acts,'  but  no  one  ever 
saw  a  body  deflected  from  its  path  move  in  the  line  of  the 
deflecting  force,  but  in  the  diagonal  of  the  two  velocities. 
While  the  law  is  necessarily  true  to  reason,  it  is  not  true  to  the 
senses. 

The  third  law  is,  perhaps,  even  more  at  variance  with  com- 
mon experience.  If  a  cart  pulls  back  upon  a  horse  just  as 
much  as  the  horse  pulls  forward, '  How  in  the  name  of  common 
sense,'  asks  the  untaught  mind,  '  does  the  cart  get  on  ?  '  If  a 
boy  and  a  man  are  tugging  at  a  rope,  the  man  pulls  the  boy 
towards  him,  and  that  certainly  does  not  look  as  if  the  boy's 
end  of  the  rope  was  pulled  back  with  exactly  the  same  force  as 
the  man's  is  pulled  in  the  opposite  direction ;  and  yet  it  un- 
doubtedly is ;  for,  says  the  third  law,  '  Action  and  reaction 
are  equal  and  contrary.'  And  thus  it  seems  plain  that  we 
should  never  have  had  any  science  of  mechanics  if  the  world 
had  had  to  wait  for  the  senses  to  give  us  the  fundamental 
truths  upon  which  it  is  so  firmly  established. 

Let  it  be  granted,  then,  that  the  first  light  thrown  upon  the 
fact  that  cause  is  a  necessary  law  of  mental  action,  comes  from 
the  discovery  of  the  precedent  fact  that  we  find  our  bodily 
movements  to  be  the  results  of  effort;  and  let  it  be  further 
granted  that  we  cannot  see  any  nexus  between  the  will,  and  the 
movement  of  the  muscles  (as  is  certainly  true),  and  yet  the 
fact  remains  that  the  whole  world  including  Hume,  thinks,  and 
cannot  help  thinking,  that  everything  which  begins  to  be  what 
it  was  not,  must  have  something  acting  upon  it,  quite  otherwise 
than  as  a  mere  precedent  existence ;  that  is,  the  whole  world 
knows  that  every  event  must  have  a  cause. 

That  energy  of  the  personality  which  discovers  to  us  necessary 
truths  is  called  the  '  Pure  Reason.' 


EMPIRICAL    AND    RATIONAL    TRUTH. 


CHAPTER    XVII. 

EMPIRICAL   AND    RATIONAL    TRUTH. 

Conditional  Syllogism  and  Law  of  Sufficient  Reason.  No  law  of  the 
natural  world  above  doubt.  Not  so  in  thought.  '  A  priori,'  '  original,' 
etc.,  truths.  Necessity  the  characteristic.  Relation  of  Deduction  and  In- 
duction. The  basis  of  Induction.  Intuition  of  Space.  The  Infinite  and 
Absolute.  The  '  Philosophy  of  the  Conditioned.' 

THE  fourth  fundamental  principle  of  logic,  the  law  of 
'  Sufficient  Reason,'  is  founded  in  the  notion  of  cause, 
and  is  that  which  gives  validity  to  conditional  syllogisms.  If  A 
is,  B  is,  expresses  a  causal  nexus  between  A  and  B,  such  that  the 
existence  of  A,  the  antecedent,  necessitates  the  existence  of  B, 
the  consequent ;  and  so  the  principle  is  sometimes  called  the 
law  of  '  Reason  and  Consequent.'  The  position  of  Hume  with 
regard  to  the  sequence  of  events,  as  we  have  seen,  is  perfectly 
true  in  the  realm  of  things.  A  thing  or  event  does  not  neces- 
sarily imply  the  existence  of  that  which  precedes  it ;  i.e.  change 
is  not  the  effect  of  mere  antecedence ;  and  we  can  never  know 
without  question,  that  any  effect  in  nature  is  compelled  by  that 
which  appears  to  be  its  cause,  and  just  for  the  reason  Hume 
urges ;  namely,  we  cannot  see  the  physical  links  in  any  suc- 
cession of  existences  :  but  with  concepts,  connected  by  a  law 
of  the  Reason,  the  difference  is  marked.  In  a  hypothetical 
proposition,  such  as  that  given  above,  where  ex  hypothesi,  A  is 
the  reason  for  B,  the  causal  nexus  is  indisputably  established 
in  thought.  If  it  be  accepted  that,  <  If  A  is,  B  is,'  a  dependence 
is  established  between  antecedent  and  consequent  which  is 
inevitable.  This  relation  has,  therefore,  a  certainty  which 


MECHANISM    AND    PERSONALITY. 

never  can  be  felt  as  between  any  two  existences  in  the  world 
of  things. 

If  now  it  becomes  categorically  certain  that  '  A  is/  i.e.  if  the 
condition  be  removed  by  the  affirmation  of  the  antecedent, 
the  existence  of  B  follows  with  a  certainty  greater  than  that 
the  earth  is. 

The  negation  of  the  condition  —  that  is,  the  denial  that  'A  is,' 
—  carries  nothing  with  it  whatever  ;  because  there  is  no  hypo- 
thetical relation  implied  between  the  non-existence  of  A  and 
B ;  B  may  exist  from  a  thousand  other  reasons  than  the  exist- 
ence of  A.  Take  a  concrete  example  :  '  If  the  price  of  flour 
goes  up,  the  poor  will  suffer.'  Here  it  is  obvious  that  though 
flour  remain  stationary,  the  poor  may  suffer  from  cold,  or 
disease,  or  what  not. 

Neither  is  there  any  relation  established  affirmatively  in  the 
proposition  between  B's  existence  and  A's ;  for  B,  as  we  have 
just  seen,  may  exist  from  other  causes ;  the  poor  may  suffer 
though  flour  continue  steady.  There  remains  but  one  other 
way  of  treating  the  proposition.  We  can  deny  the  consequent. 
In  that  case  we  touch  the  causal  nexus,  and  the  denial  of  A 
also  follows  necessarily.  If  the  poor  do  not  suffer,  the  price  of 
flour  cannot  have  advanced. 

It  is  just  because  the  causal  connection  between  separate 
acts  of  existence  can  never  be  discovered,  as  between  things 
and  events  in  nature,  that  no  law  of  the  natural  world,  as  Hume 
declares,  can  be  raised  above  the  possibility  of  doubt.  We  do 
not  doubt,  it  is  true,  that  ponderable  bodies  when  released 
from  their  supports  will  fall  to  the  ground,  under  the  action  of 
gravitation ;  but  it  is  not  unthinkable  that  they  might  be  de- 
prived of  their  weight  suddenly  by  the  action  of  some  new 
Aladdin's  Lamp,  and  fly  upwards.  The  difference,  thus,  be- 
tween necessary  truth,  in  which  the  causal  connection  is  in  the 
form  itself  and  not  at  all  dependent  upon  the  content,  and 
empirical  truth,  in  which  the  connection,  being  dependent  upon 


EMPIRICAL    AND    RATIONAL    TRUTH.  177 

the  content,  can  never  be  seen,  is  world-wide.  In  the  one 
class  we  cannot  even  start  to  doubt ;  and  in  the  other  the  roads 
to  doubt  lead  off  in  every  direction.  In  all  mathematical 
truths,  doubt  is  impossible ;  to  which  Hume  bears  such  une- 
quivocal testimony.  Try  as  we  may,  we  cannot  think  that  a 
part  is  as  great  as  the  whole,  and  so  with  all  axiomatic  truth, 
and  all  conclusions  which  flow  apodictically. 

Now  let  it  be  borne  in  mind  that  the  proposition  is  not  that 
all  persons  alike  see  truths  which  have  in  them  this  charac- 
teristic of  necessity.  It  is  often  urged  as  an  objection,  for 
example,  that  in  a  column  of  figures  several  persons  may  find 
the  sum  quite  different.  Undeniably,  one  may  make  blunders 
in  adding ;  but  does  anybody  doubt  that  the  sum  is  certain  for 
all  that,  and  that  the  trouble  is  in  the  unconscious  slips  in 
reckoning  it  ?  So  with  all  necessary  truths  which  are  recondite 
and  locked  up  to  all  but  those  of  high  mathematical  or  logical 
perception.  Truth  in  its  very  nature  is  absolutely  definite ; 
but  it  is  not  always  axiomatic.  When  not  at  once  apparent  we 
approach  it  from  the  axiomatic  side,  and  the  results  emerge 
deductively  and  necessarily,  unless  —  and  this,  as  we  shall  see 
further,  is  an  important  exception  to  note  —  unless  we  at  some 
stage  of  the  deductive  process  introduce  concealed  or  pregnant 
factors  ;  in  which  case,  the  conclusion  may  be  worthless.  The 
apodictic  or  inevitable  character  of  every  stage  of  an  argument, 
and  of  every  element  introduced,  is  presupposed. 

Axioms  or  self-evident  truths,  then,  are  the  original  elements 
out  of  which,  or  in  consequence  of  which,  all  conclusions  of  a 
deductive  and  necessary  character  result.  Even  when  they  are 
simple  —  that  is,  cannot  be  resolved  into  any  possible  elements  — 
they  are  not  equally  conspicuous  to  all  persons,  nor  to  the  same 
person  at  all  stages  of  mental  development.  They  are  not  seen 
at  all  by  any  in  the  infantile  period,  nor  by  those  of  low  mental 
development  at  once  when  pointed  out ;  and  yet,  in  point  of 
fact,  they  are  actually  employed  by  every  one  long  before  they 


1/8  MECHANISM    AND    PERSONALITY. 

become  articulately  differentiated  in  consciousness.  Their  self- 
evident  character  consists  in  this,  that  when  once  brought  into 
the  light  of  consciousness  as  objects  of  thought,  they  cannot  be 
resolved  into  more  simple  elements,  and  have  no  ground  deeper 
than  pure  necessity ;  their  contradictions  are,  therefore,  unthink- 
able. Many  people  live  and  die  without  knowing  what  an  axiom 
is,  or  so  much  as  that  there  are  any ;  but  they,  all  the  same, 
have  been  acting  upon  them  practically  at  every  stage  of  their 
conscious  life ;  and  can  be  made  to  recognize  the  fact  if  their 
attention  be  properly  directed. 

Take  an  illustration  of  this,  though  the  point  is  almost  too 
plain  to  require  it.  Suppose  the  veriest  boor,  without  any  sort 
of  education,  and  without  much  native  mental  vigor,  be  asked 
to  find  out  whether  two  posts  in  the  ground  are  of  the  same 
length.  He  would  most  likely  take  a  rod,  and  mark  the  length 
of  one  of  them  on  it,  and  then  try  the  other  by  it.  Nobody 
could  do  better ;  and  if  his  work  is  done  carefully,  the  result  is 
inevitably  correct.  Now  why  is  it  that  these  two  posts  are  pro- 
nounced equal  in  length  (if  it  should  so  prove)  through  the 
medium  of  the  rod?  The  self-evident  truth  upon  which  the 
whole  action  is  based,  when  brought  to  the  light  and  clothed  in 
words  is,  '  Two  things  which  are  equal  to  a  third  are  equal  to 
each  other.'  It  is  the  same  truth  which  we  saw  underlying  all 
syllogistic  reasoning  and  all  judgments  whatever.  It  is  neces- 
sary for  the  first  act  of  comparison,  and  is  therefore  presup- 
posed from  the  very  beginning  of  all  accumulated  knowledge. 
It  is  a  law  of  the  psychical  factor  of  the  self;  and  such  truths 
are  called, i  a  priori J  '  original,'  *  primordial,' '  intuitive,' '  funda- 
mental,' '  necessary,'  and,  I  do  not  know  by  how  many  other 
names, — all  meaning  substantially  the  same  thing.  They  be- 
long to  that  phase  of  our  cognitive  nature  called  the  '  Pure 
Reason.' 

A  distinction  is,  then,  to  be  made  between  the  Understand- 
ing and  the  Reason  —  a  logical  distinction,  though  by  no  means 


EMPIRICAL    AND    RATIONAL    TRUTH.  1 79 

a  separation.  Through  the  understanding  we  put  things  to- 
gether, or  separate  them  into  classes  or  units,  —  we  synthesize 
and  analyze,  —  but  these  operations  have  their  ground  in  the 
deeper  truths  of  the  Reason.  Reason  and  Reasoning  are  there- 
fore to  be  distinguished  in  thought.  The  '  Pure  Reason '  is 
not  properly  the  domain  of  thought  at  all,  —  it  is  the  founda- 
tion upon  which  the  whole  thought  fabric  rests.  It  is  itself 
blind,  and  so  does  not  see ;  but  the  mental  seeing  or  thought 
power  is  dependent  upon  it  for  its  validity  in  every  act.  It  is 
founded  in  the  psychical  sense^vorld,  if  I  may  so  speak,  and  is 
to  the  higher  modes  of  the  self  in  the  discovery  of  apodictic 
truth,  what  sensation,  with  its  physical  basis  and  dependence 
upon  external  stimuli,  is  to  the  world  of  sense-perceptions. 
Not  that  it  does  not  reach  down  into  these  as  well ;  because  it 
is,  so  to  speak,  the  final  court  of  appeal  in  all  possible  knowing, 
and  its  touch  must  be  co-extensive  with  the  whole  personality. 
There  is  thus  the  very  best  ground  for  calling  the  presentations 
of  the  pure  reason  intuitions,  or  face-to-face  knowledge.  They, 
as  making  all  hyper-physical  knowledge  possible,  should  seem 
to  be  analogous  to  the  senses  which  make  all  bodily  knowledge 
possible.  They  have  their  roots  in  sense-perception,  much  as 
the  senses  have  theirs  buried  out  of  sight  in  sub-conscious  sen- 
sation ;  and  there  thus  seems  to  be  two  measurably  distinct 
psychical  worlds,  —  one  the  sense-world,  based  upon  the  imme- 
diate presentations  of  the  physical  organs,  with  a  very  slight 
intellectual  factor ;  and  the  other,  the  rational  world,  distinct- 
ively ideal,  based  upon  the  face-to-face  presentations  in  the 
Pure  Reason.  The  one  is  the  region  of  brute-life ;  the  other 
of  soul-life.  In  man  the  two  are  conjoined,  —  the  ideal  mode 
superposed  upon  the  animal  mode  with  the  power  to  sublimate 
and  refine  the  lower  to  its  higher  uses. 

We  have  seen  that  the  distinguishing  characteristic  of  ra- 
tional truth  is  necessity.  In  the  conclusion  based  upon  sense- 
perception,  or  contingent  truth,  the  highest  reach  is  probability, 


l8O  MECHANISM    AND    PERSONALITY. 

and  the  chasm  between  the  highest  probability  and  a  necessary 
truth  cannot  be  spanned. 

Besides  this,  or,  better  perhaps,  in  consequence  of  this,  the 
method  by  which  any  contingent  truth  is  reached  is  the  reverse 
of  that  leading  to  a  necessary  conclusion.  In  the  case  of 
necessary  truth  the  results  or  conclusions  flow  out  from  the 
basic  elements  given  in  the  intuitions  or  axioms  of  the  pure 
reason,  as  water  from  a  fountain.  In  the  case  of  contingent 
truth  the  results  are  an  accumulation,  and  are  as  a  reservoir 
filled  by  the  flow  from  the  living  source.  This  last  process  is 
Induction.  It  is,  as  indicated  above,  synthetic;  the  rational 
process  being  analytic. 

Now,  if  I  may  use  my  figure  a  little  further,  in  the  reservoir 
there  is  always  something  more  to  come,  and  this  goes  on  for- 
ever ;  while  in  the  flowing  stream,  it  is  just  what  it  is,  from  any 
given  source.  Synthetic  or  contingent  truth  is  as  the  water  in 
a  reservoir  of  infinite  capacity,  always  increasing,  but  never 
full ;  analytic  or  rational  truth  is  living  reality,  exact  and  defi- 
nite, though  different  persons  see  more  or  less  of  it  from  any 
particular  point  of  view. 

The  inductive  method  is  to  add  fact  to  fact  until  a  probable 
conclusion  is  formed ;  and  as  the  number  of  facts  increases, 
the  conclusion  becomes  more  and  more  probable,  becoming  at 
last  overpowering ;  but  never  acquiring  the  quality  of  neces- 
sity. For  example,  some  one  in  the  beginning  observed  the 
fact  that  all  the  horned  animals  he  knew  were  ruminant. 
Others  observed  the  same  thing ;  the  inquiry  was  still  further 
extended,  until  all  parts  of  the  world  had  been  explored,  and 
the  facts  always  remaining  the  same,  it  has  become  an  estab- 
lished truth  which  no  body  doubts.  But  one  can  think  the 
contrary  easily  enough,  —  think  that  it  might  not  be  so ;  and, 
more  than  this,  it  may  not  in  fact  be  true  after  all ;  for  there 
are  still  parts  of  the  world  not  thoroughly  looked  into  ;  and 
horned  animals  may  yet  be  found  which  do  not  chew  the  cud, 


EMPIRICAL    AND    RATIONAL    TRUTH.  l8l 

In  like  way  the  most  probable  —  what  we  call  certain  facts 
of  nature  —  are  open  to  question  notwithstanding  their  uni- 
versal acceptance. 

The  question  has  been  much  debated  as  to  what  principle 
underlies  Induction ;  and  many  answers  have  been  given. 
Whately  says  it  is  resolvable  into  the  belief  in  the  "  Uniformity 
of  the  laws  of  Nature,"  —  that  this  is  the  major  premise,  and 
the  particulars  observed,  the  minor ;  and  the  whole  process 
syllogistic. 

Stuart  Mill  gives  in  his  adhesion  to  this  proposition  as  the 
"  fundamental  principle  or  general  axiom  of  Induction  "  ;  and 
yet  he  says  that  this  principle  is  the  result  of  Induction,  and 
that  it  "  is  one  of  the  last,  or  at  all  events,  one  of  those  which 
are  latest  in  attaining  philosophical  accuracy."  But  he  also 
says,  "  Unless  it  were  true,  all  other  inductions  would  be  falla- 
cious." It  is  hard  to  see  how  a  thing  can  be  the  principle 
*ipon  which  a  process  depends,  and  yet  be  the  result  of  the 
process ;  but  he  is  at  least  right  in  his  assertion  that  it  comes 
late ;  and  just  for  this  reason  it  cannot  be  the  conscious  basis 
of  a  process  which  goes  on  long  before  its  discovery. 

It  is  not  necessary  to  speak  of  other  and  more  elaborate 
theories  to  account  for  this  rational  process.  In  the  light  of 
what  has  been  said,  Induction  is  just  what  it  seems  to  be,  — 
a  systematic  gathering  together  of  facts  by  the  inherent  power 
of  personality.  The  self  is  by  its  nature  a  unifier.  It  cannot 
help  co-ordinating  all  facts  which  are  presented,  with  the  pur- 
pose of  discovering  their  meaning ;  that  is,  the  dependence  or 
the  relations  which  subsist  between  them.  When  several  facts 
present  a  common  element,  since  the  apperceiving  nature  of 
the  self  is  to  discover  order  or  law,  these  agreements  lead  the 
self  to  look  for  the  like  element  in  further  instances  of  the 
same  kind  ;  and  thus  the  expectation  rises  that  further  instances 
of  the  class  will  fall  under  the  tentative  rule  so  far  formulated. 
It  is  not,  thus,  that  there  is  any  original  notion  touching  the 


1 82  MECHANISM    AND    PERSONALITY. 

uniformity  of  the  laws  of  nature ;  for  this  has  yet  to  get  itself 
recognized,  but  it  is  that  the  self  by  the  law  of  its  nature  —  the 
spring  of  all  knowledge  —  is  a  diviner  of  law.  To  ask  why  this 
should  be  is  to  ask  why  man  should  be  as  he  is  —  a  manifestly 
idle  question.  This  power  is  the  same  as  that  which  at  a  later 
stage  is  called  the  '  Scientific  Imagination.'  It  projects  an 
order  of  sequences  which  has  been  already  noted,  into  the 
future  as  a  possible,  then  a  probable,  and  finally  as  an  estab- 
lished law.  And  this  is  all  we  can  ever  know  of  any  law  of  the 
external  world.  It  cannot  be  apodictic,  or  so  necessary  that 
its  contradictory  is  unthinkable.  It  is  at  last  but  a  fact  of 
experience  and  can  only  get  such  a  measure  of  certainty  as  its 
universality  may  warrant. 

It  is  not  possible  to  make  a  complete  inventory  of  the  neces- 
sary facts  in  this  higher  plane  of  our  psychical  nature.  No 
doubt  the  sharpest  scrutiny  must  leave  behind  many  which 
enter  into  the  daily  life  of  personality,  just  as  there  are,  indis-* 
putably,  many  physical  facts  which  science  has  not,  and  per- 
haps can  never  wholly  bring  within  the  sphere  of  the  under- 
standing. Science  is  daily  enlarging  our  scope  in  the  physical 
domain,  and  philosophy,  if  we  are  to  make  a  distinction  where 
none  really  exists,  is  giving  us  clearer  views  oT  the  higher  facts 
and  their  attendant  laws. 

It  seems  important,  however,  that  we  should  look  at  some 
of  these  fundamental  truths  of  the  hypersensible  world,  with 
some  degree  of  attention.  First,  Space  and  Time.  The  no- 
tion of  space  is  the  necessary  logical  ground  of  external  reality ; 
we  do  not  come  into  the  world  with  the  notion  ready 
formed,  but  with  a  nature  such  that  the  notion  emerges  with 
absolute  certainty  upon  an  acquaintance  with  the  external 
world,  and  once  in  the  mind,  its  contradictory  cannot  be  con- 
ceived. It  is  not  necessary  to  discuss  further  the  question  of 
its  genesis.  It  is  enough  that  it  does  certainly  emerge,  and 
when  once  in  the  mind  admits  of  no  question.  Whether  it  is 


EMPIRICAL    AND    RATIONAL    TRUTH.  183 

itself  an  objective  reality  —  that  is,  ' thing'  —  or  whether  it  is 
but  a  necessary  form  of  thought,  as  held  by  Leibnitz,  urged 
later  by  Kant,  and  finally  by  Lotze,  need  not  occupy  us  here. 
Sure  it  is,  that,  we  cannot  think  of  object  without  the  spacial 
notion  obtruding  itself  upon  us,  and  when  once  in  sight,  we 
cannot  but  admit  that  it  has  been  all  along  assumed  or  pre- 
sumed in  contemplating  extension  of  any  sort.  All  men,  in  all 
time  and  in  all  places,  show  themselves  to  be  possessed  of  the 
notion,  and  it  is  therefore  properly  called  a  pre-supposition. 

But  object  must  have  limits  or  environment,  and  it  cannot 
be  certainly  known  until  the  distinction  of  the  i  thing '  from 
what  it  is  not  is  clear  in  consciousness.  This  requires  that  the 
environment  of  a  thing  shall  be  known,  before  the  thing  can  be 
defined.  The  logical  environment  of  object,  when  all  else  is 
removed,  is  space ;  and  if  the  object  be  supposed  to  dwindle 
until  it  shrinks  up  into  zero,  the  space  occupied  by  it  at  the 
beginning  still  remains,  so  that  objects  carry  the  necessary 
notion  of  space  out  of  and  beyond  them  ;  and,  once  in  the 
mind,  it  must  remain,  though  they  be  removed  or  thought  out 
of  existence.  Now  space  cannot  be  thought  to  diminish  or 
move.  It  is  a  necessary  notion. 

But  space  as  environment  must  be  given  an  objective  exist- 
ence, at  least  in  thought.  It  must,  therefore,  itself  have  envi- 
ronment. What  is  it?  If  any  limited  portion  of  space  be 
conceived,  as  a  cube,  its  environment  can  only  be  the  space 
without.  If  it  be  enlarged,  the  external  space  does  not  retire 
before  it,  but  passes  within.  The  only  limit  of  space,  there- 
fore, is  space ;  that  is  to  say,  space  is  self-limited,  or,  which  is 
the  same  thing,  unlimited.  The  unlimited  is  the  non-finite  — 
the  Infinite.  Thus,  the  necessary  notion  of  the  Infinite 
emerges  in  the  Self. 

Sir  William  Hamilton  and  his  school  contend  that  we  can- 
not know  the  Infinite  except  as  a  negation,  or  by  '  a  thinking 
away  from  it.'  If  this  be  understood  to  mean  that  we  cannot 


184  MECHANISM    AND    PERSONALITY. 

construe  or  limit  the  unlimited,  it  is  simply  a  truism.  The 
infinite  clearly  cannot  be  shaken  together  and  compressed  so 
as  to  be  got  within  the  compass  of  the  limited,  the  '  condi- 
tioned,' which  is  the  province  of  the  understanding.  But  Sir 
William  contends  earnestly  for  a  higher  province  of  the  Self, 
that  of  necessary  truth,  —  truth  known  through  the  '  Regulative 
Faculty.'  The  '  understanding  '  has  not  then  an  exclusive  claim 
to  all  knowing,  else  what  would  become  of  this  'Regulative 
Faculty '  for  which  he  makes  such  absolute  demand  ?  What 
would  become  of  the  *  principle  of  identity,  or  cause,  or  the 
notion  of  existence  ?  There  is  a  Knowing,  —  the  deepest  of 
all,  which  lies  quite  below  the  plane  of  the  '  Elaborative  '  fac- 
ulty, —  quite  beyond  the  province  of  the  understanding,  —  a 
knowing  which  is  itself  the  ground  of  all  elaborations  of  the 
faculty  of  relations.  The  Unconditioned,  the  Infinite,  the  Ab- 
solute, the  Un-caused,  the  Omniscient,  and  Omnipotent  Pure 
Being,  and  all  the  necessary  notions  of  the  Self,  are  incontest- 
ably  known  somehow;  and  the  Understanding  is  the  instru- 
ment through  which  they  are  revealed  to  consciousness,  and  in 
attempting  to  construe  them  fails  not  to  recognize  their  inscru- 
table character.  Sir  William  would  no  doubt  have  freely 
admitted  all  this,  and  perhaps  he  has  done  it,  in  effect,  in  his 
letter  to  Calderwood  on  the  subject,  in  which  he  says  :  "  When 
I  deny  that  the  Infinite  can  by  us  be  known,  I  am  far  from 
denying  that  by  us  it  is,  must,  and  ought  to  be,  believed" 
That  is  quite  sufficient,  since  a  necessary  belief  is  the  surest  of 
all  knowing ;  but  it  seems  a  pity  that  he  did  not  see  the  bear- 
ing of  it  more  clearly,  or  seeing,  did  not  make  it  more  explicit. 
It  might  have  saved  the  revival  of  the  Sensational  School  of 
Philosophy,  and  the  consequent  flood  of  Agnosticism.  The 
same  remark  applies  to  Dean  Hansel's  "  Limits  of  Religious 
Thought,"  though  it  seems  odd  that  any  one  should  fail  to  see 
that  this  is  his  true  meaning. 


BEARING    OF    EMPIRICISM    ON    PERSONALITY.         185 


CHAPTER  XVIII. 

THE   BEARING   OF   EMPIRICISM    ON   PERSONALITY. 

Intuition  of  Time.  Time  the  ground  of  Motion  Space,  of  Mass.  Cause 
conditions  Space  and  Time.  Inertia.  Self-activity  inconceivable  in 
'  things.'  Personality  the  only  ground  of  efficient  cause.  '  Persistent 
Force.'  Doubt  as  to  the  being  of  '  force  '  as  an  entity.  Professor  Tait 
quoted.  Spencer's  effort  to  find  an  ultimate  Reality.  Energy  implies 
Personality.  Spencer's  position  sounder  than  that  of  his  followers. 
Quoted.  His  '  Unknown  '  known. 

TIME  is  the  logical  ground  of  change.  There  can  be  no 
motion,  no  becoming,  out  of  time.  It  is  therefore  a  nec- 
essary presupposition  of  motion,  as  space  is  of  mass.  The  time- 
object  is  an  event.  Its  environment  is  that  which  precedes  or 
follows.  An  event  can  only  be  limited  by  an  event,  and  so  all 
history  is  but  an  account  of  actions,  or  of  things  and  places  as 
accessory  to  actions.  Space  and  Time  are,  as  the  mathema- 
ticians say,  incommensurable,  they  have  no  common  unit.  No 
possible  effort  of  thought  can  find  a  passage-way  from  time  over 
into  space,  or  from  space  into  time. 

Time  and  space,  then,  taken  together,  are  the  presupposi- 
tions or  ground  of  all  things,  —  time,  the  rational  condition  of 
motion,  —  space,  that  of  mass,  —  motion  and  mass  being  the 
only  two  factors  which  physical  science  has  found  irresolvable, 
and  into  which  all  physical  phenomena  can  themselves  be  re- 
solved. But  now  we  find  that  they  each  have  a  psychological 
basis,  and  that  these  necessary  presuppositions  of  the  self  are 
the  ground  of  all  physical  reality. 

An  object  stands  related  necessarily  to  its  environment,  and 
the  ground  of  the  object,  as  well  as  that  which  lies  beyond  and 


1 86  MECHANISM    AND    PERSONALITY. 

out  of  the  object,  is  extension  or  space.  The  external  space  is  a 
reason  for  the  limit  which  defines  the  object,  and  the  object  is 
a  reason  which  defines  external  extension  in  the  direction  of  the 
object.  Take  away  either  of  these,  with  respect  to  the  other, 
and  that  other  disappears  from  thought.  They  must,  then, 
stand  related  as  cause  and  effect. 

But  we  have  seen  that  in  order  to  have  a  notion  of  a  limited 
portion  of  space,  as  of  a  geometrical  cube,  we  are  compelled 
to  give  it  an  environment,  and  that  this  environment  is  itself 
space.  If  we  do  not  conceive  space  as  excluding  itself,  we 
must  give  up  our  notion  of  a  definite  portion  of  pure  or  geo- 
metrical space.  There  is  a  reason,  therefore,  for  any  possible 
conception  of  dimensions  or  defined  extension.  But  a  reason 
for  a  thing  is  its  cause ;  and  if  one  definite  portion  of  space 
did  not  support  or  exclude  the  space  without,  it  would  all  rush 
together  into  a  point  and  disappear.  This  seems  to  be  a  nec- 
essary notion,  regarding  space  as  a  somewhat  having  an  inde- 
pendent existence  external  to  us,  or,  as  a  rational  intuition,  with 
only  a  subjective  reality.  Space,  then,  has  a  ground  deeper 
than  itself  in  the  notion  of  cause.1 

The  case  is  the  same  with  Time.  An  event  is  defined  or 
limited  by  other  events,  one  before  and  the  other  after. 
Removing  these,  the  event  itself  must  pass  out  of  thought. 
But  when  we  consider  a  portion  of  pure  time,  as  a  minute  or 
any  fraction  of  a  minute,  the  limits  are  still  the  preceding  and 
succeeding  instants,  which  are  reciprocally  the  reasons  one  for 
the  other.  If  the  defined  instant  is  not  thought  of  as  excluding 
those  on  either  hand,  time  can  no  longer  be  thought  of  as  en- 
during, but  must  collapse  into  zero  and  disappear.  The  notion 
of  causation,  therefore,  cannot  be  got  rid  of,  even  in  time, 
whether  it  be  regarded  as  objective  or  subjective. 

But  now  that  we  have  found  causation  to  be  the  necessary 

1  See  W.  T.  Harris'  "  Philosophy  in  Outline,"  reprint  from  Journal 
of  Speculative  Philosophy. 


BEARING    OF    EMPIRICISM    ON    PERSONALITY.          l8/ 

ground  in  the  world  of  extension  and  of  duration,  that  is  to 
say,  of  all  that  we  know  in  the  external  world,  we  are  com- 
pelled to  allow  causality  itself  to  have  a  ground  deeper  than 
itself.  A  cause  to  be  a  cause  must  have  an  effect,  and  an  effect 
to  be  an  effect  must  have  a  cause.  But  these  must  in  some 
way  affect  each  other.  The  cause  must  produce  or  compel  its 
effect,  and  the  effect  must  necessarily  receive  and  store  up 
the  cause.  This  is  energy,  kinetic  (moving)  or  potential 
(quiescent). 

But  energy  must  proceed  or  go  out.  This  it  must  do  of 
itself,  or  it  must  itself  be  compelled ;  that  is  to  say,  it  must  be 
the  recipient  of  action.  In  the  world  of  inanimate  things,  we 
never  think  of  one  thing  acting  upon  another,  without  being 
itself  first  acted  upon.  A  stone  would  lie  just  where  it  is  for- 
ever, if  not  disturbed  by  some  external  energy.  It  would  never 
change  the  state  or  condition,  i.e.  its  molecular  condition, 
unless  it  were  acted  upon  by  moisture,  heat  light,  electricity, 
or  some  mode  of  energy ;  and  when  so  affected,  it  converts 
kinetic  energy  into  potential ;  which  it  in  turn  gives  forth  again 
as  kinetic ;  but  only  when  some  change  takes  place  in  its 
environment.  It  is  inert ;  and  this  principle  is  the  fundamental 
postulate  of  mechanics  —  Newton's  first  law.  It  is  the  prin- 
ciple of  Inertia. 

It  is  important  to  get  a  clear  notion  of  what  is  meant  by 
Inertia.  It  is  that  property  of  matter  by  which  change  is 
resisted,  with  respect  to  either  rest  or  motion.  It  is  thus 
always  in  the  opposition,  —  its  voice  an  eternal  'Nay.'  It  is 
the  all-pervading  recalcitrant  factor  of  external  nature ;  and 
just  for  this  reason,  the  conserver  of  the  material  Universe. 
But  for  inertia,  nothing  would  lie  still,  and  nothing  could  move, 
since  a  breath  would  move  the  world,  and  a  breath  would  stop 
it  when  in  motion.  It  is  the  one  necessary  condition  of  matter. 

In  consequence,  then,  of  this  conserver  of  the  material  Uni- 
verse, inert  objects  have  not  the  power  of  self-action,  but  can 


l88  MECHANISM    AND    PERSONALITY. 

only  be  the  agents  of  such  energy  as  may  be  transferred  to 
them.  When  we  say  that  a  stone  is  the  cause  of  the  breakage 
of  a  pane  of  glass,  we  know  well  enough  that  we  do  not  quite 
mean  it.  We  know  that  there  must  have  been  a  hand  and 
arm  to  set  the  stone  in  motion,  if  it  have  a  human  origin ;  and 
when  we  have  traced  it  back  to  such  a  source,  we  seek  no 
further,  but  are  satisfied  that  we  have  found  the  cause  in  the 
true  sense. 

An  action  belonging  to  the  class  in  which  one  insentient 
thing  acts  upon  another,  is  called  a  secondary  or  occasional 
cause.  One  belonging  to  the  class  in  which  we  find  the  origin 
of  the  action  to  be  a  person  is  called  an  original  or  an  efficient 
cause.  When  an  action  is  the  result  of  the  working  of  nature, 
as  when  we  say,  'The  sun  is  the  cause  of  light  and  heat,'  or 
'  Matter  is  the  cause  of  gravitation  and  inertia,'  it  clearly  be- 
longs to  the  class  of  secondary  causes.  We  could  think  of  the 
sun  being  the  cause  of  its  own  action,  only  upon  the  precedent 
thought  that  it  has  personality.  It  is  impossible  for  one  to 
predicate  self-action  of  anything  without  assuming  sensibility 
as  a  necessary  postulate,  —  such  sensibility,  too,  as  makes  it 
possible  for  the  animated  being  to  put  forth  a  purposive  action. 
This,  I  think,  we  are  warranted  in  saying,  is  the  universal  con- 
viction of  men.  And  thus  it  is  that  in  Rhetoric  we  have  the 
figure  of  personification  in  which  inanimate  objects  are,  in  fancy, 
invested  with  life  and  self-activity.  The  admission  that  an 
inanimate  object  could  act  of  itself,  would  utterly  overthrow 
the  whole  science  of  mechanics. 

It  seems  clear,  then,  that  the  only  class  of  actions  which  can 
be  properly  called  causal  are  original  or  efficient  causes ;  that 
is,  actions  of  sentient  beings.  The  self,  therefore,  or  person- 
ality is  the  ground,  or  presupposition,  of  cause  :  and  thus  we 
are  once  more  back  at  the  universal  and  necessary  postulate  of 
all  certitude,  the  ego. 

There  is  another  point  which  has  an  important  bearing  on 


BEARING   OF    EMPIRICISM    ON    PERSONALITY.  189 

this  subject.  As  we  have  so  often  said,  the  steady  trend  of  all 
science  is  to  resolve  all  phenomena  of  nature  into  mass  and 
motion,  and  the  one  branch  of  science  to  which  every  other 
looks  submissively  is  mechanics.  The  leaders  in  it  have  been 
forward  to  look  into  the  grounds  upon  which  its  conclusions  in 
molecular  and  molar  action  are  based,  and  have  found  some 
remarkable  things. 

Since  the  days  of  Sir  Isaac  Newton,  the  march  of  this  branch 
of  science  has  been  steady  and  brilliant.  The  one  concept 
about  which  the  whole  system  has  revolved  is  '  force  ' ;  and  the 
philosopher,  par  excellence,  of  the  physical  side  of  nature,  has, 
in  our  day,  staked  his  whole  philosophic  fabric  on  the  postulate 
of  '  Persistent  Force.' 

It  is  important,  therefore,  that  we  should  consider  this 
concept  for  a  moment ;  and  it  will  be  interesting  to  note  the 
present  bearing  of  science  in  this  respect  upon  the  Spencerian 
philosophy.  Professor  Tait,  in  his  "  Recent  Advances  in  Physi- 
cal Science,"  speaking  of  Force,  says  :  "The  notion  is  suggested 
to  us  directly,  by  the  so-called  'muscular  sense,'  which  gives 
us  the  feeling  of  pressure,  as  when  we  move  a  body  with  our 
hand  or  foot.  But  we  must  be  particularly  cautious  as  to  the 
way  in  which  we  treat  the  evidence  of  our  senses  in  such  mat- 
ters. Think  of  Sound  and  Light,  for  instance,  which,  till  they 
affect  a  special  organ  of  sense,  are  mere  wave  motions.  The 
sensation  is  as  different  from  the  cause  in  such  cases  as  are  the 
bruise  and  the  pain  produced  by  a  cudgel  or  a  cricket  ball  from 
the  mere  motion  of  those  portions  of  matter  before  impact  on 
a  part  of  the  human  body.  In  all  likelihood  a  similar  (prob- 
ably a  more  sweeping)  statement  is  true  of  force. 

"The  definition  of  force  in  physical  science  is  implicitly 
contained  in  Newton's  first  Law  of  Motion,  and  may  thus  be 
given  :  Force  is  any  cause  which  alters  or  tends  to  alter  a 
body's  state  of  rest,  or  of  uniform  motion  in  a  straight  line. 

"  The  only  difficulty,  and  it  is  a  serious  one,  which  we  feel 


MECHANISM    AND    PERSONALITY. 

here,  is  as  to  the  word  '  cause ' ;  for  this,  amongst  material 
things,  usually  implies  objective  existence.  Now  we  have  abso- 
lutely no  proof  of  the  objective  existence  of  force  in  the  sense 
just  explained.  In  every  case  in  which  force  is  said  to  act, 
what  is  really  observed,  independent  of  the  muscular  sense 
(whose  indications,  like  those  of  the  sense  of  touch  in  matters 
concerning  the  temperature  of  bodies,  are  apt  to  be  excessively 
misleading) ,  is  either  a  transference,  or  a  tendency  to  transfer- 
ence, of  what  is  called  energy  from  one  portion  of  matter  to 
another.  Whenever  such  a  transference  takes  place,  there  is 
relative  motion  of  the  portions  of  matter  concerned,  and  the 
so-called  force  in  any  direction  is  merely  the  rate  of  transfer- 
ence of  energy  per  unit  of  length  for  displacement  in  that 
direction.  Force  then  has  not  necessarily  objective  reality,  any 
more  than  has  Velocity  or  Position.  The  idea,  however,  is  still 
a  very  useful  one,  as  it  introduces  a  term  which  enables  us  to 
abbreviate  statements  which  would  otherwise  be  long  and 
tedious ;  but  as  science  advances,  it  is  in  all  probability  des- 
tined to  be  relegated  to  that  Limbo  which  has  already  received 
the  Crystal  spheres  of  the  Planets,  and  the  Four  elements, 
along  with  Caloric  and  Phlogiston,  the  Electric  Fluid,  and  the 
Odic  or  Psychic  Force." 

Under  the  title  '  Mechanics '  in  the  Britannica  he  treats  of 
the  question  more  at  large.  I  quote  as  follows  :  "  So  far  we 
have  treated  of  force  as  acting  on  a  body  without  inquiring 
whence  or  why ;  we  have  referred  to  the  first  and  second  laws 
of  motion  only,  and  have  thus  seen  only  one-half  of  the  phe- 
nomenon. As  soon,  however,  as  we  turn  to  the  third  law,  we 
find  a  new  light  cast  on  the  question.  Force  is  always  dual. 
To  every  action  there  is  always  an  equal  and  contrary  reaction. 
Thus,  the  weight  we  lift,  or  try  to  lift,  and  the  massive  gate  we 
open,  or  try  to  open,  both  as  truly  exert  force  upon  our  hands 
as  we  do  upon  them.  This  looking  to  the  other  side  of  the 
account,  as  it  were,  puts  matters  in  a  very  different  aspect. 


BEARING    OF    EMPIRICISM    ON    PERSONALITY.          IQI 

'  Do  you  mean  to  tell  me,'  said  a  medical  man  of  the  old 
school,  '  that  if  I  pull  a  "  subject "  by  the  hand,  it  will  pull  me 
with  an  equal  and  opposite  force  ? '  When  he  was  convinced 
of  the  truth  of  this  statement,  he  gave  up  the  objectivity  of 
force  at  once. 

"  The  third  law,  in  modern  phraseology,  is  simply  this : 
Eyery  action  between  two  bodies  is  a  stress.  When  we  pull  one 
end  of  a  string,  the  other  end  being  fixed,  we  produce  what  is 
called  tension  in  the  string.  When  we  push  one  end  of  a  beam, 
of  which  the  other  end  is  fixed,  we  produce  what  is  called 
pressure  throughout  the  beam.  .  .  .  But  in  the  case  of  the 
string,  the  part  of  the  stress  which  every  portion  exerts  on  the 
adjoining  portion  is  2.  pull ;  in  the  case  of  the  beam  it  is  a  push. 
And  all  this  distribution  of  stress,  though  exerted  across  every 
one  of  the  infinitely  numerous  cross-sections  of  the  string  or 
beam,  disappears  the  moment  we  let  go  the  end.  We  can 
thus,  by  a  touch,  call  into  action  at  will  an  infinite  number  of 
stresses,  and  put  them  out  of  existence  again  as  easily.  This, 
of  itself,  is  a  very  strong  argument  against  the  supposition  that 
force,  in  any  form,  can  have  objective  reality.  .  .  . 

"  If  we  inquire  carefully  into  the  grounds  we  have  for  believ- 
ing that  matter  (whatever  it  may  be)  has  objective  existence, 
we  find  that  by  far  the  most  convincing  of  them  is  what  may 
be  called  the  '  conservation  of  matter.'  This  means  that,  do 
what  we  will,  we  cannot  alter  the  mass  or  the  quantity  of  a  por- 
tion of  matter.  We  may  change  its  form,  dimensions,  state  of 
aggregation,  etc.,  or  (by  chemical  processes)  we  may  entirely 
alter  its  appearance  and  properties,  but  its  quantity  remains 
unchanged.  It  is  this  experimental  result  which  has  led,  by 
the  aid  of  the  balance,  to  the  immense  developments  of  modern 
chemistry.  If  we  receive  this  as  evidence  of  the  objective 
reality  of  matter,  we  must  allow  objective  reality  in  anything 
else  which  we  find  to  be  conserved  in  the  same  sense  as  matter 
is  conserved.  Now  there  is  no  such  thing  as  negative  mass ; 


IQ2  MECHANISM    AND    PERSONALITY. 

mass  is,  in  mathematical  language,  a  signless  quantity.  Hence 
the  conservation  of  matter  does  not  contemplate  the  simultane- 
ous production  of  equal  quantities  of  positive  and  negative 
mass,  thus  leaving  the  (algebraic)  sum  unchanged.  But  this 
is  the  nature  of  the  conservation  of  momentum  and  of  moment 
of  momentum.  The  only  other  known  thing  in  the  physical 
universe,  which  is  conserved  in  the  same  sense  as  matter  is 
conserved,  is  energy.  Hence  we  naturally  consider  energy  as 
the  other  objective  reality  in  the  physical  universe,  and  look  to 
it  for  information  as  to  the  true  nature  of  what  we  call  force." 

Such  are  the  reasons  from  the  scientific  side  for  doubting  the 
objective  reality  of  force,  and  for  the  substantial  abandonment 
of  the  use  of  the  word  in  scientific  treatises.  There  is  still 
much  to  be  said  in  the  same  direction  from  the  metaphysical 
side,  but  let  it  pass. 

Mr.  Herbert  Spencer  in  a  note  to  Chapter  VI.,  "  First  Prin- 
ciples," tells  us  that  he  was  in  some  perplexity  in  the  beginning 
for  a  satisfactory  name  for  '  the  Unconditioned  Reality,  without 
beginning  or  end,'  which  was  to  serve  as  the  ultimate  in  his 
system.  He  could  not  permit  himself  to  use  the  word  '  energy,' 
since,  as  he  says,  "  it  is  impossible  to  think  of  '  energy  '  without 
something  possessing  the  energy."  He  expressed  to  Professor 
Huxley  his  '  dissatisfaction  with  the  (then)  current  expression 
"  Conservation  of  Force  "  :  assigning  as  a  reason,  first,  that  the 
word  "  conservation  "  implies  a  conserver  and  an  act  of  con- 
serving ;  and  second,  that  it  does  not  imply  the  existence  of 
the  force  before  the  particular  manifestation  of  it  which  is  con- 
templated.' He  goes  on  to  say  :  "  I  may  now  add,  as  a  further 
fault,  the  tacit  assumption  that,  without  some  act  of  conserva- 
tion, force  would  disappear.  All  these  implications  are  at 
variance  with  the  conception  to  be  conveyed.  In  place  of 
'  conservation  '  Professor  Huxley  suggested  persistence.  This 
meets  most  of  the  objections,  and  though  it  may  be  urged 
against  it  that  it  does  not  directly  imply  pre- existence  of  the 


BEARING    OF    EMPIRICISM    ON    PERSONALITY.          193 

force  at  any  time  manifested,  yet  no  other  word  less  faulty  in 
this  respect  can  be  found.  In  the  absence  of  a  word  specially 
coined  for  the  purpose,  it  seems  the  best,  and  as  such  I 
adopt  it." 

It  seems  the  irony  of  fate,  that  after  the  care  Mr.  Spencer 
has  taken  not  to  adopt  the  word  '  energy  '  which  would  carry 
with  it  the  notion  of  an  energizer,  and  to  exclude  the  word 
'conservation'  lest  it  should  allow  of  a  conserver,  that  ad- 
vanced science  should  lose  faith  in  the  reality  of  '  Persistent 
Force,'  or  any  sort  of  force,  and  insist  upon  it  that  the  discarded 
'  energy,'  which  the  philosopher  declares  cannot  be  thought  of 
'  without  something  possessing  it,'  is  after  all  the  one  thing 
which  persists  !  It  only  shows  the  impossibility  of  arriving  at 
the  ultimate  in  the  realm  of  things.  But  in  fairness  to  Mr. 
Spencer,  it  must  be  said  that  he  has  done  much  to  guard  him- 
self against  the  charge  of  erecting  his  splendid  fabric  on  noth- 
ing as  a  foundation,  even  though  there  be  no  such  thing  as 
'  Persistent  Force.'  For  he  has  qualified  the  phrase  in  a  way 
which  gives  it  an  undoubted  somewhat  as  a  content.  He  says, 
in  the  chapter  in  which  the  phrase  is  introduced,  that  '  By  the 
Persistence  of  Force,  we  really  mean  the  persistence  of  some 
cause  which  transcends  our  knowledge  and  conception.'  '  In 
asserting  it  we  assert  an  Unconditioned  Reality,  without  begin- 
ning or  end.' 

This  definition  is  thoroughly  satisfactory,  and  no  metaphysi- 
cian or  theologian  can  reasonably  ask  more  :  but  the  trouble  is 
that  it  has  been  too  much  left  out  of  sight,  and  the  common 
mind  has  accepted  the  phrase,  '  persistent  force,'  as  the  symbol 
for  something  dead  and  unintelligent.  Mr.  Spencer  perhaps 
never  entertained  such  a  notion,  —  certain  it  is  that  he  now 
earnestly  repudiates  such  a  construction.  He  now  holds  that 
his  ultimate  '  Cause  which  transcends  our  knowledge  and  con- 
ception,' is  an  '  Infinite  and  Eternal  Energy.'  How  he  differs 
affirmatively  in  this  regard  from  the  most  rigid  theologian,  I 


194  MECHANISM    AND    PERSONALITY. 

am  unable  to  see.  His  words  are  clear  and  sweeping  :  '  I  held 
at  the  outset,  and  continue  to  hold,  that  the  Inscrutable  Exist- 
ence, which  science  in  the  last  resort  is  compelled  to  recognize 
as  unreached  by  its  deepest  analysis  of  matter,  motion,  thought, 
and  feeling,  stands  towards  our  general  conception  of  things  in 
substantially  the  same  relation  as  does  the  Creative  Power 
asserted  by  Theology.'  Negatively,  he  hesitates  to  apply  the 
appellation  '  Person '  to  this  '  Inscrutable  Existence/  —  this 
'Infinite  and  Eternal  Energy,'  lest  he  should  limit  it.  He 
would  not  degrade  the  Unknown  Cause  of  things  below  per- 
sonality, but  raise  it  higher.  Well,  that  is,  I  take  it,  just  what 
the  theologian  would  do.  He  simply  does  not  know  how,  any 
more  than  Mr.  Spencer,  —  he  does  the  best  he  can,  however ; 
and  herein  seems  to  be  the  only  difference  between  the  two. 
In  the  '  Unknown  All- Being '  we  cannot  but  recognize  the 
Christian's  '  Lord  of  All  Power  and  Might.' 

This  is  a  matter  of  so  much  moment  that  the  reader  will  not, 
I  hope,  feel  impatient  if  we  stop  a  little  longer  on  it.  And  the 
question  to  be  asked  is  this  :  Is  the  reason  Mr.  Spencer  gives 
for  denying  personality  to  that  which  he  does  not  now  hesitate 
to  call  energy,  really  valid  ?  He  says  that,  '  On  raising  an  ob- 
ject from  the  ground,  we  are  obliged  to  think  of  its  downward 
pull  as  equal  and  opposite  to  our  upward  pull ;  and  although  it 
is  impossible  to  represent  these  as  equal  without  representing 
them  as  like  in  kind ;  yet,  since  their  likeness  in  kind  would 
imply  in  the  object  a  sensation  of  muscular  tension,  which  can- 
not be  ascribed  to  it,  we  are  compelled  to  admit  that  force  as 
it  exists  out  of  our  consciousness,  is  not  force  as  we  know  it. 
Hence  the  force  of  which  we  assert  persistence  is  that  Abso- 
lute Force  of  which  we  are  indefinitely  conscious  as  the  neces- 
sary correlate  of-  the  force  we  know.' 

Since,  however,  Mr.  Spencer  now  freely  uses  the  word 
'  energy '  in  a  sense,  it  is  to  be  presumed,  he  would  not  have 
used  it  thirty  years  ago,  it  is  fair  to  assume  that  he  would  not 


BEARING    OF    EMPIRICISM    ON    PERSONALITY.          195 

now  contend  that  '  force  as  it  exists  out  of  our  consciousness 
is  not  force  as  we  know  it,'  and  that,  if  it  were  to  be  done  over, 
he  would  hardly  think  the  distinction  so  certain  or  so  essential 
as  to  be  made  the  ultimate  ground  of  a  system  of  Philosophy. 
In  point  of  fact,  the  definition  he  gives  of  his  fundamental 
phrase  is  so  much  larger  than  a  fair  construction  of  the  phrase 
itself  would  warrant,  that  there  does  not  seem  to  have  been 
any  pressing  need  for  it  at  all ;  and  when  it  is  further  taken 
into  account,  that  it  is  at  best  but  a  factitious  phrase,  in  the 
beginning  unsatisfactory  to  the  philosopher  himself,  we  may  be 
permitted  to  regret  that  it  was  given  such  emphasis  and  impor- 
tance. The  ground  of  such  regret  is  that,  while  the  author  of 
this  stupendous  system  has  been  at  great  pains  from  the  begin- 
ning, not  to  shut  up  the  way  towards  the  very  highest  spiritual 
(non-material)  conception  of  the  Universe,  there  is  nevertheless 
an  atmosphere  everywhere  pervading  it,  which  admits  of,  and 
to  the  general  reader  seems  inevitably  to  lead  to,  the  thought 
of  a  soulless  and  dead  source  and  spring  of  all  things.  It  is 
to  be  freely  admitted,  I  repeat,  that  such  a  charge  cannot  in 
justice  lie  against  Mr.  Spencer,  though  he  saw  and  expressed 
the  danger  of  such  a  misconception ;  and  it  is  to  be  regretted, 
that  his  hostile  critics  have  not  dwelt  more  upon  the  phase 
which  makes  for  the  truth  as  they  see  it,  and  less  upon  that 
which  is  so  obnoxious  to  them.  Any  number  of  passages 
could  be  quoted  to  show  the  anxiety  of  Mr.  Spencer  not  to  be 
set  down  as  a  materialist,  but  take  the  following,  from  the  last 
chapter  of  "  First  Principles  "  :  "  The  liability  to  misrepresenta- 
tion is  so  great,  that  notwithstanding  all  evidence  to  the  con- 
trary, there  will  probably  have  arisen  in  not  a  few  minds,  the 
conviction  that  the  solutions  which  have  been  given,  along  with 
those  to  be  derived  from  them,  are  essentially  materialistic.  .  .  . 
Men  who  have  not  risen  above  that  vulgar  conception  which 
unites  with  matter  the  contemptuous  epithet  '  gross '  and 
'brute,'  may  naturally  feel  dismay  at  the  proposal  to  reduce 


196  MECHANISM    AND    PERSONALITY. 

the  phenomenon  of  Life,  of  Mind,  and  of  Society  to  a  level  with 
those  which  they  think  so  degraded.  But  whoever  remembers 
that  the  forms  of  existence  which  the  uncultivated  speak  of 
with  so  much  scorn,  are  shown  by  the  man  of  science  to  be  the 
more  marvellous  in  their  attributes  the  more  they  are  investi- 
gated, and  are  also  proved  to  be  in  their  ultimate  natures  abso- 
lutely incomprehensible  —  as  absolutely  incomprehensible  as 
sensation,  or  the  conscious  something  which  perceives  it ; 
whoever  clearly  recognizes  this  truth,  will  see  that  the  course 
proposed  does  not  imply  a  degradation  of  the  so-called  higher, 
but  an  elevation  of  the  so-called  lower.  .  .  .  Being  fully  con- 
vinced that  whatever  nomenclature  is  used,  the  ultimate  mys- 
tery must  remain  the  same,  he  will  be  as  ready  to  formulate  all 
phenomena  in  terms  of  Matter,  Motion,  and  Force,  as  in  any 
other  terms ;  and  will  rather  indeed  anticipate,  that  only  in  a 
doctrine  which  recognizes  the  Unknown  Cause  as  co-extensive 
with  all  orders  of  phenomena  can  there  be  a  consistent  Relig- 
ion or  a  consistent  Philosophy." 

This  is  clear  and  strong,  but  it  will  be  quite  worth  while  to 
hear  him  speak  further  upon  this  point ;  and  I  am  under  a  very 
false  conviction  if  the  greater  part  of  those  who  talk  either  for 
or  against  Herbert  Spencer  are  not  practical  exemplifications 
of  the  truth  of  the  first  phrase  of  what  follows,  speaking  in 
ignorance,  or  in  total  disregard,  of  the  statement  which  it  intro- 
duces. He  says  :  "  Though  it  is  impossible  to  prevent  mis- 
representations, especially  when  the  questions  involved  are  of  a 
kind  that  excite  so  much  animus,  yet  to  guard  against  them  as 
far  as  may  be,  it  will  be  well  to  make  a  succinct  and  emphatic 
re-statement  of  the  Philosophico-Religious  doctrine  which  per- 
vades the  foregoing  pages.  Over  and  over  again  it  has  been 
shown  in  various  ways,  that  the  deepest  truths  we  can  reach 
are  simply  statements  of  the  widest  uniformities  in  our  expe- 
rience of  the  relations  of  Matter,  Motion,  and  Force ;  and  that 
Matter,  Motion,  and  Force  are  but  symbols  of  the  Unknown 


BEARING    OF    EMPIRICISM    ON    PERSONALITY. 

Reality.  A  Power  of  which  the  nature  remains  forever  incon- 
ceivable, and  to  which  no  limits  in  Time  or  Space  can  be  im- 
agined, works  in  us  certain  effects.  These  effects  have  certain 
likenesses  of  connection,  the  most  constant  of  which  we  class 
as  laws  of  the  highest  certainty.  The  interpretation  of  afl 
phenomena  in  terms  of  Matter,  Motion,  and  Force,  is  nothing 
more  than  the  reduction  of  our  complex  symbols  of  thought 
to  the  simplest  symbols ;  and  when  the  equation  has  been 
brought  to  its  lowest  terms  the  symbols  remain  symbols  still. 
Hence  the  reasonings  contained  in  the  foregoing  pages  afford 
no  support  to  either  of  the  antagonistic  hypotheses  respecting 
the  ultimate  nature  of  things.  Their  implications  are  no  more 
materialistic  than  they  are  spiritualistic ;  and  no  more  spiritu- 
alistic than  they  are  materialistic.  Any  argument  which  is 
apparently  furnished  to  either  hypothesis,  is  neutralized  by  as 
good  an  argument  furnished  to  the  other.  The  materialist, 
seeing  it  to  be  a  necessary  deduction  from  the  law  of  correla- 
tion, that  what  exists  in  consciousness  under  the  form  of  feel- 
ing, is  transferable  into  an  equivalent  of  mechanical  motion, 
and  by  consequence  into  equivalents  of  all  the  other  forces 
which  matter  exhibits,  may  consider  it  therefore  demon- 
strated that  the  phenomena  of  consciousness  are  material  phe- 
nomena. But  the  spiritualist,  setting  out  with  the  same  data, 
may  argue  with  equal  cogency,  that  if  the  forces  displayed  by 
matter  are  cognizable  only  under  the  shape  of  those  equivalent 
amounts  of  consciousness  which  they  produce,  it  is  to  be  in- 
ferred that  these  forces,  when  existing  out  of  consciousness,  are 
of  the  same  intrinsic  nature  as  when  existing  in  consciousness, 
and  that  so  is  justified  the  spiritualistic  conception  of  the  ex- 
ternal world,  as  consisting  of  something  essentially  identical 
with  what  we  call  mind.  Manifestly,  the  establishment  of 
correlation  and  equivalence  between  the  forces  of  the  outer 
and  the  inner  worlds,  may  be  used  to  assimilate  either  to  the 
other,  according  as  we  set  out  with  one  or  the  other  term.  But 


IQ8  MECHANISM    AND    PERSONALITY. 

he  who  rightly  interprets  the  doctrine  contained  in  this  work, 
will  see  that  neither  of  these  terms  can  be  taken  as  ultimate. 
He  will  see  that  though  the  relation  of  subject  and  object  ren- 
ders necessary  to  us  these  antithetical  conceptions  of  Spirit  and 
Matter,  the  one  is  no  less  than  the  other  to  be  regarded  as  but 
a  sign  of  the  Unknown  Reality  which  underlies  both." 

These  are  the  final  sentences  of  Mr.  Spencer's  first  work  on 
Philosophy.  It  is  manifestly  unjust  to  say  that  he  is  consciously 
either  a  materialist  or  a  spiritualist,  though  since  he  says  that 
the  antithetical  concepts  of  Spirit  and  Matter  are  necessary  to 
us,  it  should  seem  that  he  must  be  both.  It  ends  with  an  ex- 
plicit declaration  of  the  certainty  of  that  ultimate  Reality  of 
which  he  has  never  for  a  moment  lost  sight,  —  a  Reality  which 
he  nevertheless  continues  to  qualify  by  the  adjective,  Unknown. 
But  how  unknown  ?  Plainly  not  in  the  sense  of  the  un-thought 
upon,  and  not  in  the  sense  of  the  non-existent.  It  is  not  so 
unknown  as  that  he  could  not  make  a  book  about  It,  —  not  so 
unknown  as  not  to  be  a  certainty,  a  Reality,  a  Cause,  a  Power, 
a  Force,  —  to  have  Persistence,  and  some  way  of  manifesting 
itself  in  the  modes  of  Matter,  Motion,  and  Mind.  That  this 
ultimate  Reality  may  be  so  far  known  (and  do  these  specializa- 
tions include  all  the  phenomena  of  the  universe?)  and  yet 
remain  unknown  in  many  ways,  admits  of  no  question ;  but  the 
same  is  equally  true  of  the  philosopher  himself.  He  is  un- 
doubtedly well  known  to  his  friends,  and  to  all  the  world,  but 
is  he  not,  in  many  respects,  especially  in  his  ultimate  nature, 
utterly  unknown  ?  Is  there  anything  which,  in  like  regard,  is 
not  unknown  ?  How  then  can  he  mean  that  his  ultimate  Reality 
is  unknown,  except  in  this  same  ultimate  aspect?  And  if  this 
be  the  sense  in  which  we  are  to  construe  this  formidable  adjec- 
tive, what  is  it  but  to  say  that  the  unknowable  is  unknown?  If 
this  be  the  attitude  of  Agnosticism,  then  we  are  all  Agnostics. 


FEELING,  199 


CHAPTER  XIX. 

FEELING. 

Classification.  Pain  and  pleasure.  Sensuous  Feeling.  Herbartian 
scheme.  Intensity  and  quality  in  feeling.  Coenesthisia.  Esoteric  and 
Exoteric  feeling.  The  one  working  from  within  emerges  in  the  under- 
standing ;  the  other  built  up  through  the  understanding.  Practical 
bearing. 

AS  was  absolutely  necessary,  in  treating  of  cognition  we  had 
constantly  to  assume,  and  in  some  sort  discuss,  sensation 
and  will.  Indeed,  sensation  has  had  almost  as  much  consider- 
ation as  the  cognitive  power,  while  in  the  physiological  treat- 
ment it  was  altogether  dominant. 

Sensation,  lying  as  it  does  at  the  threshold  of  consciousness, 
is  to  be  considered  —  if  we  are  to  give  order  of  precedence  to 
these  ever  varying  factors  —  as  the  foundation  of  all  emotive 
activity,  with  volition  as  the  apex. 

Separating  the  sentient  element,  as  far  as  we  may,  from  the 
other  modes  of  personality,  we  can  construct  a  pyramid  which 
shall  roughly  exhibit  the  principal  phases  of  feeling,  of  which 
sensation  in  its  lowest,  unspecialized  form  must  serve  as  the 
base,  as  in  the  figure  on  the  following  page. 

What  is  meant  by  sensation  in  this  basic  sense,  will  be  suf- 
ficiently understood  from  what  has  gone  before.  It  is,  so  to 
speak,  the  blind  response  given  through  the  nervous  organism 
to  stimuli  of  whatever  nature  from  without.  It  is  not  yet  feel- 
ing in  any  true  sense,  not  yet  being  sufficiently  differentiated 
to  be  construed  in  consciousness. 

Out  of  this  vital  soil,  if  I  may  so  say,  the  tree  of  feeling 


200 


MECHANISM   AND    PERSONALITY. 


springs,  with  its  many  branches  spreading  out  into  twigs  and  foli- 
age in  infinite  variety.  There  is  no  possibility  of  knowing  what 
sensation  is,  and  to  ask  the  question  is  to  ask  how  the  question 
itself  can  be  asked.  It  is  given  us,  as  it  is  given  the  protozoa ; 
and  we  have  but  to  accept  it,  and  be  thankful.  We  can  note, 
however,  the  varying  phases  of  this  fundamental  factor  of  the 


EXOTERIC 


ESOTERIC 


WiLL  =  GOOD 


ESTHETIC  Vy  SENSIBILITY  =  BEAUTY 
FEELING         \\ 

RATIONAL  Vy  COGNITION  =  TRUTH 

FEELING  >X 


SENSUOUS 
FEELING 


SENSATION 


VITAL 
FUNCTIONS 


living  organism ;  and  we  see  that  in  the  earliest  stages  of 
vitality,  the  development  seems  to  be  carried  on  through  sen- 
sation, with  resulting  movement.  At  what  point  in  the  scale 
of  animate  being  ideation  and  purposive  movement  discover 
themselves,  none  can  certainly  say.  It  is  not,  however,  until 
these  appear  that  sensation  rises  from  its  elementary  form  into 
a  complex  whole,  gradually  becoming  more  and  more  com- 


FEELING.  2OI 

posite,  until  at  last,  infinitely  complicated,  it  becomes  what  is 
rightly  called  feeling. 

Sensation,  with  its  primitive  features  and  functions,  is  never 
absent  in  the  higher  forms  of  the  scale  ;  but  still  exerts  its  sub- 
conscious energy,  just  as  the  foundations  of  a  building  ever 
continue  to  send  upward  their  reactions  to  capstone  and  pin- 
nacle, though  out  of  sight  and  unthought  upon. 

What  physiology  can  tell  us  of  sensory  and  motor  actions 
and  reactions  throws  no  light  upon  what  feeling  really  is.  It 
is,  as  has  been  said,  rather  a  matter  of  being  than  of  knowl- 
edge, and  gets  its  meaning  through  the  understanding.  Why 
it  is  that  a  bitter  taste  is  disagreeable,  and  the  appeasing  of 
hunger  pleasant,  admits  of  no  real  answer.  The  physiologist 
may  show  that  the  one  affects  favorably,  and  the  other  unfavor- 
ably, the  development  of  tissue,  and  so  hinders  or  helps  the 
body  with  respect  to  its  harmonious  action ;  —  but  while  this 
shows  that  the  one  effect  is  hurtful  to  a  certain  end,  and  the 
other  helpful,  it  throws  no  light  upon  why  pain  accompanies 
the  one,  and  pleasure  the  other. 

It  may  be  well,  however,  to  look  at  the  question  of  pleasure 
and  pain  a  moment,  from  a  teleological  -point  of  view,  i.e.  as  to 
the  ends  they  subserve. 

The  world  is  full  of  people  who  are  constantly  declaiming 
against  the  fact  that  there  is  any  such  thing  as  pain  at  all ;  and 
in  these  last  days,  certain  sciolists,  taking  this  fact  as  a  text, 
talk  wretched  nonsense,  to  speak  of  it  in  the  mildest  terms, 
about  '  a  bad  God  '  for  allowing  it.  They  do  not  seem  to  know 
that  if  there  were  no  pain,  there  could  be  no  pleasure,  —  no 
satisfaction  of  any  kind,  since  pleasure  could  then  have  no  lim- 
itations, and  would  fall  out  of  recognition.  That  would  be  bad 
enough,  but  would  only  be  the  beginning  of  the  disaster  :  there 
could  be  no  sensation  of  any  sort,  and  no  knowledge.  Man 
would  be  reduced  to  a  senseless  mass  of  inert  matter,  —  if  even 
this  could  be  the  end  of  it. 


2O2  MECHANISM   AND    PERSONALITY. 

Pleasure  and  pain  are  not '  things,'  but  feelings,  utterly  incom- 
municable. A  thought  —  any  kind  of  knowledge  proper  (for 
feeling,  though  by  its  nature  inseparable  numerically  from 
thought,  is  not  thought,  and  must  be  translated  into  thought 
before  it  can  become  knowledge)  —  may  be  communicated  or 
shared  with  another ;  not  so  feeling.  If  pleasure  were  not  so 
transferred  to  the  cognitive  mode  of  the  self,  it  would  be,  for 
us,  as  though  it  were  not.  But  we  have  seen  that  any  concept, 
to  be  known,  must  be  negated,  and  the  negative  of  pleasure  is 
pain  ;  so  that  if  pain  were  impossible,  satisfaction  would  be  also. 
One  could  not  maintain  one's  existence  without  this  much 
maligned  element  of  our  nature.  In  some  careless  moment, 
one  would  burn  up,  without  knowing  what  was  going  on ;  starve, 
not  knowing  oneself  to  be  hungry ;  and  so  throughout  the 
round  of  life.  Pleasures  are  not  ends  in  any  sense  to  be  pur- 
sued, nor  is  suffering  a  calamity,  per  se,  to  be  avoided.  They 
are  accessory  to  ends  which  are  higher  than  pleasure ;  and  are 
warnings  against  calamity  more  dreadful  than  pain  in  its  direst 
form. 

That  pleasure  and  pain  are  only  known  in  relation  is  shown 
by  the  fact  that  a  diminished  pleasure  is  a  pain,  and  a  dimin- 
ished pain  a  thoroughly  recognizable  satisfaction.  The  con- 
trast may  vary  through  many  stages.  That  which  gives  one 
pleasure  to-day  may  be  the  source  of  pain  to-morrow.  It  is 
the  relation  which  determines  the  degree.  A  sum  of  money 
lost,  or  gained,  produces  a  vastly  different  feeling  at  one  time, 
and  another.  The  indulgence  of  an  appetite  may  be  highly 
satisfactory  at  night,  while  horrors  may  be  the  result  in  the 
morning. 

Sensuous  Feeling,  the  lowest  form  of  sentient  energy  which 
can  be  rightly  called  feeling  at  all,  embraces  all  specialized 
sensations  as  to  place  and  kind,  —  all  agreeable  and  disagreea- 
ble tastes  and  smells ;  all  the  recognized  affections  of  the  self 


FEELING.  203 

through  the  special  and  general  senses,  —  in  short,  all  bodily 
affections  which  give  rise  to  satisfaction  or  infelicity. 

As  we  have  seen,  feeling  to  be  known  must  be  translated 
into  thought ;  and  so  psychologists  of  the  Herbartian  school 
work  out  a  very  complete  scheme  to  account  for  the  play  of  the 
emotive  nature  in  what  they  call  '  furthering '  and  '  arresting ' 
concepts.  The  state  of  consciousness  is  like  the  rapid  changes 
which  we  often  see  in  the  clouds  under  the  action  of  cross  cur- 
rents in  the  air.  New  concepts  are  constantly  rising  to  contest 
the  place  of  the  old.  These  do  not  yield  without  resistance  ; 
the  new  and  the  old  meet  with  every  variety  in  force  and 
direction,  the  main  divisions  supported  by  many  auxiliary 
forces  on  either  side ;  and  so  the  contest,  sometimes  in  com- 
parative peace  and  gentleness,  and  at  others,  with  rapid  and 
violent  movement,  but  never  ending,  goes  on  through  life. 
Assuming  that  there  is  a  measurably  constant  quality  of  psy- 
chical energy  when  no  arresting  concepts  are  present,  the  flow 
is  regular,  and  there  is  a  general  feeling  of  satisfaction ;  when  a 
new  concept  acts  with  the  current,  a  positive  pleasure ;  but 
arrest  gives  rise  to  a  partial  stoppage,  which  is  depressing  or 
painful.  A  feeling  is  thus  the  consciousness  of  the  furthering, 
or  arrest,  of  the  flow  of  thought,  —  pleasurable  if  it  be  with, 
painful  if  it  be  against,  this  movement. 

This  still  does  not  really  tell  us  anything  of  what  feeling  is. 
It  but  gives  us  the  thought-basis  of  feeling,  or  the  manifesta- 
tions in  thought,  as  the  feeling  may  come  from  the  lower  or 
higher  states  of  the  self ;  but  these  are  not  feeling  itself,  any 
more  than  the  action  of  sensory  and  motor  nerves  are  sensa- 
tion. 

It  is  hardly  necessary  to  enter,  in  any  detail,  upon  the  ques- 
tion as  to  how  localization  of  sensations  by  which  they  gain 
character  and  rise  into  the  light  of  consciousness,  take  place. 
The  writers  on  the  side  of  scientific  psychology,  such  as  Her- 
bart,  Bain,  Wundt,  and  Spencer,  have  gone  over  the  ground 


2O4  MECHANISM    AND    PERSONALITY. 

with  infinite  pains,  and  with  such  completeness  of  detail,  as 
would  prove  wearisome  to  the  general  reader,  even  in  outline, 
with  no  corresponding  profit. 

We  pass  on  to  a  summary  of  a  more  general  character.  The 
gustatory  senses,  taste  and  smell,  the  lowest  in  the  scale  for 
scope  and  variety,  are  chiefly  charged  with  the  duty  of  provis- 
ioning the  physical  organism.  They  afford  the  basic  motives 
which,  taken  with  the  pains  of  appetite,  induce  original  effort. 
Food  is  made  pleasant  to  the  palate,  or  we  could  not  main- 
tain our  existence.  If  a  resistance  had  to  be  overcome  at  every 
morsel  which  enters  the  mouth,  or  if  it  were  a  matter  of  indif- 
ference, the  child  would  have  to  be  forced  to  take  nourishment, 
or  rather,  could  not  be  made  to  take  it  at  all,  and  would  die  at 
the  start.  It  would  be  no  better  with  the  adult,  if  any  there 
could  ever  be.  The  teleological  value  then  of  pleasure  in  the 
reception  of  food  is  plainly  manifest.  It  is  perhaps  not  too 
much  to  say,  that  many  people  seem  to  be  satisfied  that  they 
have  found  the  end  and  object  of  life,  at  this  mere  threshold  of 
existence,  and  make  ends  of  what  are  simply  means. 

It  is  to  be  noted,  that  in  the  pleasures  of  the  palate  there  is 
the  same  ascending  scale  which  we  have  found  everywhere, 
and  which  will  continue  to  meet  us  as  we  go  on.  In  the  be- 
ginning of  life  only  the  simplest  flavors  and  savors  are  pleasant. 
The  child  resists  vigorously  nearly  all  condiments,  such  as  pep- 
per, mustard,  and  the  higher  spices  which  the  cultivated  palate 
finds  quite  necessary  to  remove  insipidity ;  so  that  finally  the 
highest  satisfaction  of  the  gustatory  sense  lies  clearly  in  the 
domain  which  at  the  earlier  stage  would  be  pronounced  de- 
cidedly painful.  In  the  lower  plane,  the  stimuli  are  gentle, 
becoming  more  intense  as  we  ascend.  This  difference  in  gra- 
dation is  called  '  quantity '  or  '  intensity.' 

All  pleasures  and  pains  have  this  quantitative  characteristic. 
Any  sensation  raised  beyond  a  certain  point,  differing  for  dif- 
ferent persons,  passes  from  pleasure  into  pain,  or  the  reverse. 


FEELING.  205 

These  limits  cannot  be  definitely  fixed,  and  are  not  constant. 
In  sound,  if  the  attention  has  to  be  strained,  or  if  there  remain 
vagueness  and  uncertainty,  the  effect  is  unpleasant ;  if  raised 
beyond  a  certain  degree  of  loudness,  it  is  also  painful.  Between 
the  two  lies  agreeableness,  reaching  the  maximum  at  the  point 
where  there  is  an  easy  flow  without  stress  upon  the  organism. 
With  light  it  is  the  same ;  and  so  with  the  tactual  or  any  other 
sense. 

But  this  point  of  maximum  agreeableness  does  not  remain 
stationary  in  the  same  organism  for  any  considerable  time. 
The  same  unvarying  sensation  long  continued,  though  alto- 
gether agreeable  at  first,  becomes  monotonous,  and  even  pain- 
ful. This  characteristic  is  called  the  '  duration.'  Sensation 
must  not  be  too  short,  for  then  there  is  a  baffled  feeling ; 
it  must  not  be  too  long,  or  weariness  results.  Continued  uni- 
formity is  impossible.  Even  an  acute  sensation  is  greatly 
abated  by  long  continuance,  so  that  at  last  it  almost  passes  out 
of  consciousness.  Thus  there  is  a  constant  adjustment  of  the 
organism  to  defeat  continuance  of  either  pleasure  or  pain. 

There  is  also  what  is  called  '  quality  '  in  feeling.  This  refers 
to  the  kinds  of  stimuli  whence  the  feeling  arises.  There  is  a 
marked  difference  between  a  pleasure  due  to  sensation  through 
touch,  and  one  granting  the  degree  of  satisfaction  the  same, 
through  sight.  Sir  William  Hamilton,  following  Kant,  main- 
tains that  there  is  an  inverse  ratio  between  feeling  and  knowl- 
edge, that  in  the  senses  beginning  with  touch,  in  which  sensa- 
tion is  at  a  maximum,  there  is  a  marked  diminution  up  to  sight, 
in  which  the  sensuous  element  is  no  longer  distinguishable ; 
while,  on  the  other  hand,  cognition  is  at  a  minimum  in  touch, 
and  sensation  at  a  maximum.  So  it  is,  in  general,  in  the  rela- 
tion between  feeling  and  thought.  In  the  higher  stages  of  feel- 
ing, the  sensuous  factor  almost,  or  entirely,  drops  out,  so  far  as 
discoverable  in  consciousness.  A  scale  arranged  on  this  basis 
would  give  us  differences  in  '  quality.' 


206  MECHANISM    AND    PERSONALITY. 

Mention  has  already  been  made  of  what  is  called  the  '  sensus 
communis,'  or  'common  feeling/  falling  under  the  general 
head  of  coenesthesia.  A  word  or  two  only  will  be  necessary 
here.  The  feeling  of  buoyancy,  or  depression,  plays  a  very 
conspicuous  part  in  every  one's  life ;  and  it  is,  therefore,  of 
great  practical  importance.  It  has  been  called  the  massive 
or  voluminous  sense ;  perhaps  because  one  has  such  a  large 
opinion  of  oneself  when  everything  seems  to  go  one's  own 
way.  The  flow  of  the  intellectual  and  emotional  life  is  in  full 
sweep,  the  countenance  cheerful ;  and,  if  one  be  young,  or  fail 
to  exercise  a  dignified  restraint  if  old,  gladness  breaks  out  in 
laughter  and  frolics.  It  is  the  joy  of  living.  The  reverse  state, 
known  generally  as  the  '  dumps,'  or  '  blues,'  presents  a  melan- 
choly contrast.  The  world  is  out  of  joint,  last  friend  gone, 
the  bottom  fallen  out,  etc.,  and  all  from  no  other  reason 
than  the  depression  of  general  tone.  If,  however,  these  results 
are  due,  as  they  may  be,  to  known  causes,  they  are  removed 
from  this  classification. 

The  sensations  due  to  specific  touch  also  belong  to  this  class 
of  Sensuous  Feeling,  such  as  soft,  smooth,  rasping,  etc.  Many 
people  show  marked  peculiarities  connected  with  this  lower 
form  of  feeling.  Some  organisms  are  very  disagreeably  affected 
by  the  touch  of  velvet,  the  fuzz  of  a  peach,  and  many  like 
substances.  Also  by  certain  perfumes  and  flavors.  The  effects 
are  sometimes  uncontrollable  and  violent.  «  All  that  can  be 
said  is,  that  these  effects  seem  to  be  due  to  idiosyncrasies  of 
organism. 

There  is  a  marked  difference  between  the  lower  group  of  the 
senses,  —  touch,  taste,  smell,  as  well  as  all  the  newly  discovered 
senses,  —  and  the  higher  group,  hearing  and  sight.  Sensation 
excited  by  stimulating  any  one  of  the  lower  group  is  purely 
subjective,  and  has  localization  within  the  body ;  on  the  other 
hand,  sensation  in  the  higher  group  has  an  objective  character, 
the  localization  being  external  to  the  body.  For  this  reason  the 


FEELING.  207 

lower  class  of  sensations  may  be  called  '  Esoteric,'  and  the 
higher  class  '  Exoteric.'  In  the  esoteric  class  the  feeling  excited 
carries  with  it  the  consciousness  of  the  mechanism,  or  instru- 
ment of  sensation ;  in  the  exoteric,  on  the  contrary,  the  feeling 
is  quite  independent  of  any  consciousness  of  bodily  affection. 
Thus,  in  the  flavor  of  an  orange,  I  am  conscious  of  the  taste  in 
the  mouth ;  but  with  the  color  of  a  violet,  consciousness  de- 
clares the  color  to  be,  not  in  the  eye,  but  in  the  flower  itself. 

This  difference  marks  an  important  distinction  between  the 
entire  domain  of  '  Sensuous  Feeling,'  and  that  immense  range 
above,  which  we  have  called  the  t  Rational,'  '  Esthetic,'  and 
Moral  Feelings.  In  the  one  case  we  have  feeling,  simply 
recognized  as  existing ;  in  the  other,  there  is  no  proper  feeling 
at  all,  until  perception  of  that  which  is  without  produces  a 
reaction  in  the  sensibilities  :  that  is,  in  sensuousness,  the  sense 
element  is  primary  and  the  intellectual  element  secondary :  in 
the  higher  range,  the  thought  element  is  primary,  and  the 
emotional  element  secondary. 

This  has  an  important  practical  bearing,  since  it  thus  appears 
that,  in  the  psychical  factor  of  the  personality,  there  are  two 
well-marked  domains  of  feeling;  the  one  essentially  funda- 
mental, as  pertaining  and  ministering  to  the  animal  mechanism  ; 
the  other,  acquired  through  self-activity,  is  characteristic  of  the 
psychical  factor  of  the  personality.  Feeling,  from  the  lower 
plane,  is  simply  forced  upon  the  personality,  and  suffers  very 
little  modification;  feeling,  from  the  higher  domain,  is  sec- 
ondary, being  derived  through  the  rational  efforts  of  the  self, 
and  depending  upon  it  for  its  infinitely  various  shades  of  refine- 
ment and  intensity.  The  one  comes  from  below,  and  is  com- 
mon to  man  and  the  lower  animals ;  the  other  comes  from 
above,  and  is  the  peculiar  heritage  of  man  alone.  The  true 
work  of  a  rational  creature  is,  negatively,  to  regulate  and  hold 
himself  in  check  with  respect  to  esoteric  feeling ;  positively,  to 
expand,  refine,  and  elevate  his  nature  in  the  domain  of  exoteric 


2O8  MECHANISM    AND    PERSONALITY. 

sensibility.  Yielding  to  the  one,  he  becomes  a  slave  and  ret- 
rogrades towards  mere  animality ;  cultivating  the  other,  he  rises 
into  freedom  and  lives  upon  the  heights. 

The  three  main  divisions  of  that  class  of  Feeling  which  I 
have  ventured  to  call  Exoteric  are  specialized,  each,  by  one  of 
the  three  fundamental  modes  of  the  Self:  thus  Rational  Feel- 
ing finds  its  characteristic  in  Cognition,  with  Truth  as  its  con- 
tent ;  Esthetic  Feeling  in  Sensation,  with  the  Beautiful  as  its 
content ;  while  Moral  Feeling  is  dependent  on  the  Will,  and  has 
the  Good  as  its  content.  Now  as  there  is  an  underlying  unity 
in  the  three  several  notes  which  give  character,  respectively,  to 
these  different  forms  of  feeling,  so  we  cannot  but  think  there 
must  be  unity,  also,  in  their  content ;  the  ultimate  ground  of 
all  being  the  one  Infinite  Personality. 

The  primitive  desires  of  our  nature  are  founded  essentially 
in  Esoteric  Feeling.  They  are  blind,  and  ray  out  in  every 
direction,  seeking  satisfaction.  In  their  original  activities  they 
are,  in  a  moral  point  of  view,  neither  good  nor  bad,  —  have  no 
moral  quality  whatever.  But  experience  soon  teaches  us  that 
the  unbridled  indulgence  of  these  original  propulsions  results 
in  pain  and  injury,  and  we  are  compelled  to  practise  self- 
restraint.  This  is  the  beginning  of  personal  development, — 
the  '  Thou  shalt  not '  of  personality. 

But  there  is  another  class  of  desires,  the  Exoteric,  built  up 
through  the  objective  senses,  by  means  of  cognition  and  will. 
Such  desires  are  not  absolutely  independent  of  esoteric  feeling, 
—  there  never  can  be  any  possible  emotive  activity  that  is ; 
but  they  have  an  objective  character,  and  come  into  us,  so  to 
speak,  from  without,  by  our  own  conscious  activity,  instead  of 
being  beforehand  with  consciousness,  as  is  the  case  with  the 
esoteric  class.  Such  are  the  desires  for  power,  wealth,  learn- 
ing, fame,  and  all  the  ends  for  which  men  strive,  and  to  which 
they  attribute  value,  from  a  discovery  of  their  meaning.  The 
character  and  intensity  of  these  desires  will  depend  upon  the 


FEELING.  2O9 

values  discovered  to  be  in  them,  or  rightly  or  wrongly  assigned 
them  by  the  power  of  the  understanding,  and  the  determina- 
tion to  pursue  or  turn  away  from  them.  In  the  beginning,  the 
emotive  element  with  respect  to  them  is  feeble,  and  it  is  in 
man's  power  to  keep  it  so  ;  but  it  is  also  in  his  power  to  increase 
it,  not  directly,  it  is  true,  but  indirectly,  by  dwelling  upon,  and 
establishing  more  firmly  in  the  mind,  the  worth  and  importance 
to  him  of  the  particular  end  which  the  desire  subserves.  The 
effect  of  environment  in  this  work  of  building  up  the  emotive 
phase  of  personality  is  obvious.  Parents,  teachers,  societies, 
are  constantly  emphasizing  the  several  ends  which  seem  to  them 
of  paramount  importance ;  and  the  child,  the  youth,  the  man, 
has  borne  in  upon  him  true  or  false  values,  which  being  as- 
sented to  or  repelled  by  him,  develop  his  emotive  nature,  and  • 
so  the  personality,  for  better  or  for  worse.  This  of  course 
involves  the  regulation  and  control,  as  well,  of  the  esoteric 
class  of  desires.  They,  by  proper  handling,  may  be  greatly 
refined  and  elevated ;  but  so  long  as  the  vital  tides  are  strong, 
they  continue  to  move  us  vigorously  towards  their  blind  ends  ; 
and  so,  we  find  the  best  of  men,  in  moments  of  weakness  or 
under  abnormal  temptations,  thrown  off  their  balance,  and 
yielding  to  what  is  in  glaring  conflict  with  their  higher  natures. 

Passion  is  a  temporary  release,  and  abnormal  stimulation  of 
the  lower  desires. 

In  the  nature  of  the  case,  we  cannot  know  what  ultimate 
Truth  is,  since  we  should  be  compelled,  in  a  final  analysis,  to 
explain  it  by  means  of  itself.  When  we  say,  therefore,  that 
the  ground  of  Rational  Feeling  is  the  True,  we  have  reached 
the  utmost  limit  in  the  way  of  explanation,  and  must  turn  back 
and  content  ourselves  with  the  divers  forms  under  which  it 
presents  itself  to  our  powers  of  apprehension.  By  virtue  of 
our  human  personality  we  do  apprehend  it,  with  more  or  less 
readiness  and  certainty,  and,  so  apprehending,  love  it,  with  vary- 
ing degrees  of  intensity,  depending  primarily  on  our  native 


210  MECHANISM    AND    PERSONALITY. 

susceptibility,  but  perhaps  more  largely  in  the  degree  and  qual- 
ity of  the  development  in  us  of  what  we  have  called  exoteric 
sensibility.  Rational  Feeling  is  thus  an  immediate  response  of 
the  self  to  discovered  truth,  just  as  the  sense  of  touch  is  the 
response  to  an  external  stimulus. 

But  the  important  distinction  must  be  borne  in  mind  that  a 
sensation  coming  to  us  through  the  stimulation  of  any  one  of 
these  esoteric  senses  is  immediate,  and  the  function  of  the 
understanding  is  to  construe  it ;  while  in  the  higher  feeling  no 
sensation  comes  or  can  come  to  us  until  it  has  first  passed 
through  the  scrutiny  of  the  understanding.  The  self-developed 
sensibilities  then  respond  according  to  the  character  and  degree 
of  such  development,  and  independently  of  volitional  control. 

The  question  as  to  what  is  true  is  purely  a  matter  of  the 
understanding,  and  its  conclusions  vary  through  a  large  range 
for  the  same  person  at  different  stages  of  enlightenment,  and 
through  a  larger  range  for  different  persons,  under  varying  cir- 
cumstances of  time,  place,  and  education.  The  understanding, 
however,  having  once  pronounced,  the  developed  sensibilities 
respond  at  once  upon  the  presentation  of  the  proper  thought 
stimuli;  and  thus  it  is  that  the  same  subject  or  thing  affects 
different  persons,  or  the  same  person  at  different  times,  so 
variously. 


FEELING.  211 


CHAPTER   XX. 

FEELING  (continued}. 

Rational  feeling.  Esthetic  feeling.  Beauty.  Periodic  motion.  Music. 
Vision.  Illusions.  Berkeley's  'Theory  of  Vision.'  Knowledge  through 
vision.  Cheselden's  Case.  Other  cases.  Problems  mentioned. 

1  "T)  ATIONAL  Feeling  '  is  that  satisfaction  which  arises  in 
JLv  us  from  the  discovery  of  the  reasonableness  of  things,  — 
a  sense  of  harmony  among  varying  phenomena ;  and,  on  the  other 
hand,  the  annoyance  and  perturbation  resulting  from  a  baffled 
effort  to  find  the  law,  which  we  somehow  know  obtains,  though 
not  yet  recognized.  The  sensation  is  one  of  effort,  resulting, 
if  effective,  in  an  exaltation,  —  a  feeling  of  victory  and  triumph  : 
if  unsuccessful,  in  a  sense  of  impotence  and  disappointment. 
The  self,  by  reason  of  an  inborn  energy,  tries  always  to  solve 
difficulties,  and  find  the  key  to  phenomena ;  if  the  effort  be 
baffled,  there  results  a  sense  of  failure  which  shows  itself  in  fret- 
fulness.  When  once  an  inquiry  is  raised,  and  there  is  sufficient 
interest  engaged,  the  self  is  never  satisfied  until  the  relation 
between  phenomena  is  clear.  Confusion  is  a  source  of  annoy- 
ance, and  is  resisted.  When  the  clew  seems  at  hand,  we  are 
pervaded  by  a  pleasurable  eagerness, —  a  *  feeling  which  every 
one  has  experienced  in  solving  a  mathematical  problem,  or 
working  out  a  puzzle.  So,  also,  we  often  feel  surprise  and 
bewilderment  in  the  prosecution  of  an  inquiry. 

The  ground  of  the  emotion  in  all  this  vast  domain  is  intel- 
lectual ;  and  the  end  toward  which  it  moves  us  is  truth.  It  has 
been  called  by  psychologists, '  Logical  Feeling,'  and  also  '  Formal 


212  MECHANISM    AND    PERSONALITY. 

Feeling.'  It  is  especially  dominant  in  scientific  inquiries,  result- 
ing from  the  exercise  of  the  'Scientific  Imagination.' 

In  (  Esthetic  Feeling '  the  ground  is  Sensation ;  but  it  is  Sen- 
sation projected  upon  reality  without,  in  space-  and  time-forms. 
It  is  essentially  a  somewhat  felt — Rational  Feeling  being  a 
somewhat  understood.  We  perceive  the  beautiful  in  form  and 
tone,  through  Esthetic  phenomena,  —  we  conceive  the  True 
through  the  relation  of  things  and  events. 

By  the  logical  powers  we  comprehend  the  meaning  of  the 
external  world,  and  find  a  response  in  our  emotional  nature 
which  loves  the  True  : — without  stopping  to  construe  or  ask 
why,  we  see  and  hear  in  the  world  without  what  is  pleasing  to 
eye  and  ear.  One  is  a  pleasing  thought ;  the  other  is  a  pleas- 
ing sensation.  Thus,  in  a  general  way,  the  Beautiful  is  the 
object  of  Esthetic  Feeling;  while  Rational  Feeling  finds  its 
satisfaction  in  the  True. 

Now  it  is  not  to  be  seriously  doubted  that  Truth  and  Beauty 
are  bound  together  by  an  indissoluble  tie,  and  that,  to  an  intelli- 
gence sufficiently  exalted,  the  true  would  always  appear  beauti- 
ful, and  the  beautiful  true.  As  it  is,  we  can  discover  something 
of  this  nexus. 

We  have  already  seen,  in  speaking  of  the  senses  from  the 
physiological  point  of  view,  that  vibration  is  the  physical  basis 
of  the  sensation  of  sound.  The  sense  of  hearing  occupies  an 
especially  important  place  as  opening  the  way  to  the  whole 
rationale  of  science,  in  the  all-embracing  doctrine  of  undula- 
tions. The  motions  in  sound  phenomena  are  of  such  a  slug- 
gish character,  that  they  can  be  made  apparent  to  the  eye 
and  touch,  and  yet  it  can  hardly  be  said  that  vibrations  are 
known  at  all  to  the  hearing.  Whenever  pulsations  reach  a  suf- 
ficient frequency  to  produce  a  continuous  sound  or  tone,  the 
vibratory  character  is  swallowed  up  in,  or  rather,  is,  for  the 
feeling,  the  tone  itself. 

It  is  through  this  doorway  of  sound  that  we  get  a  look  into 


FEELING.  213 

the  rhythmic  wonders  of  creation,  and  have  at  the  same  time  an 
exemplification  of  Rational  and  Esthetic  Feeling.  It  is  here  that 
we  catch  the  first  glimpse  of  that  magic  and  mystery  of  motion 
which  has  come  to  be  the  scientific  postulate  of  all  possible 
phenomena,  and  which  is  the  only  explanation  science  has  to 
give  for  sound,  light,  heat,  electricity,  —  the  heavens  and  the 
earth.  We  look  not  with  the  eye,  but  the  imagination,  and  see 
periodic  motion  —  motion  back  and  forth  —  in  circles  and 
ellipses  and  straight  lines,  —  in  parabolas  and  hyperbolas,  —  in 
every  conceivable  variety  of  the  conic  curves,  —  all  keeping 
time  in  a  sort  of  a  rhythmic  dance  ;  and  this  is  sound.  What 
possible  likeness  is  there  between  the  feeling  excited  by  a  flute 
note,  and  the  rapid  swaying  in  and  out,  from  one  oval  shape  to 
another,  of  the  embrasure  into  which  the  air  is  breathed,  and 
the  witches'  dance  of  air  particles  caused  within  the  tube  !  What 
possible  nexus  in  thought  is  there  between  the  delicate  tints  of 
the  violet,  and  the  million  times  more  rapid  scurry  to  and  fro  of 
the  luminiferous  ether  !  This  is  strain  enough  upon  one's  fancy, 
but  when  we  are  required  to  see  in  the  solid  and  immovable 
door-knob,  nothing  but  an  infinite  play  of  vortical  motion,  and 
admit  the  deadest  of  all  dead  matter  to  be  but  motionless 
motion,  old-fashioned  common  sense  feels  abashed.  When  we 
have  got  this  far  it  seems  too  late  for  one  to  cast  scorn  upon 
the  famous  inventor,  who,  it  is  said,  expects  to  propel  an  ocean 
steamer  across  the  Atlantic,  with  the  movements  of  a  fiddle 
bow  ! 

But,  not  to  quite  lose  ourselves  in  this  mazy  world,  if  we  like 
not  to  give  in  to  the  demands  of  science,  we  shall  find  great 
difficulty  to  discover  a  place  where  we  can  halt,  and  say,  '  thus 
far  and  no  farther.'  We  shall  be  beaten  back  until  all  explana- 
tion must  be  abandoned,  and  find  ourselves  in  that  other  world 
of  magic,  so  familiar  to  the  nursery.  We  are  compelled  to  fall 
in  and  move  with  this  '  fleeting  show,'  finding  it  after  all  the 
same  old  commonplace  world  ;  only  convinced  that  we  do  not 


214  MECHANISM    AND    PERSONALITY. 

know  as  much  as  we  thought,  before  we  tried  to  look  beneath 
the  surface  of  things. 

One  thing  seems  plain  through  all  this  wonderland;  and 
it  is  that  periodic  movement  lies  at  the  bottom  of  it.  This 
is  the  rational  basis  of  what  we  call  rhythm.  This  rhythm  is, 
however,  infinite  in  variety,  so  that  perfect  uniformity,  perfect 
agreement,  is  never  to  be  found. 

If  I  may  so  express  it,  nothing  in  the  Universe  exactly  fits. 
It  is  a  trite  saying  that  no  two  shells  on  the  seashore  are  alike, 
and  no  two  leaves  upon  the  trees  ;  much  less  are  any  two  faces 
—  any  two  voices  —  any  two  thoughts,  —  alike.  Likeness  is  no 
more  a  law  of  the  Universe  than  difference  ;  harmony  no  more 
discovers  itself  than  dissonance ;  except  that  we  are  compelled 
to  recognize  the  one  as  positive  and  the  other  negative.  In  the 
movements  of  the  heavenly  bodies  there  seem  to  be  no  two 
exactly  commensurate.  The  period  of  the  revolution  of  the 
earth  upon  its  axis  is  no  exact  part  of  the  periodic  time  of  the 
earth  around  the  sun ;  nor  is  this  period  exactly  measured  by 
any  other  of  the  celestial  revolutions.  In  music  we  have  the 
same  thing.  The  notes  of  the  diatonic  scale  do  not  present 
perfect  agreement  in  intervals.  There  is  '  the  little  rift '  —  always 
a  little  too  much,  or  not  quite  enough.  There  is  no  '  dead 
point '  in  the  mechanism  of  the  All-Father.  He  is  the  '  One 
in  the  Many,'  and  the  '  Many  in  One  ' ;  and  whatever  comes 
from  His  Hand  defies  the  ultimate  scrutiny  of  man. 

Writers  generally  are  pretty  well  agreed  in  ranking  light 
above  hearing,  and  no  doubt  they  are  right,  considered  from  a 
utilitarian  point  of  view ;  but  it  may  be  seriously  questioned 
from  the  sentient  and  emotional  standpoint.  Remove  speech 
and  music  from  the  world,  and  with  them  would  go  perhaps 
the  larger  part  of  esthetic  enjoyment.  The  range  of  the  audi- 
tory sense  is  far  greater  than  that  of  sight.  The  octave  above 
octave  finds  nothing  like  it  in  any  other  sense.  We  do  not 
know,  and  cannot  conceive,  what  the  spectacular  effect  would  be 


FEELING.  215 

if  light  built  itself  up,  tier  on  tier,  like  music ;  though  it  is 
possible  that  in  higher  orders  of  being  such  color-effects  may 
actually  obtain.  But  certain  it  is,  that  the  heart  and  imagina- 
tion, through  this  wonderful  fact  in  sound,  are  wrought  up  to 
diviner  heights  than  can  be  produced  through  the  eye.  Not 
only  has  sound  this  marked  advantage  over  sight  in  altitude, 
but  its  advantage  in  expanse  is  almost  as  remarkable.  Sight 
takes  in  only  one-half  the  circumference  about  us,  and  that 
imperfectly,  but  hearing  embraces  the  whole  circle.  The  eye 
must  be  directed  by  muscular  movement,  —  the  ear  is  always 
ready  to  respond  to  whatever  is  within  the  radius  of  its  power. 
The  pleasure  given  one  through  the  ear  is  largely  augmented 
by  cultivation.  There  is  the  same  ascent  from  the  simple  to 
the  complex  which  we  have  noted  in  the  senses  already  consid- 
ered. At  first  the  simple  unison  of  sounds  is  a  delight ;  and 
the  untutored  ear  enjoys  harmonies  which  are  open  or  far 
apart.  Two  persons  singing  together,  one  an  octave  above  the 
other,  give  the  untaught  ear  satisfaction,  but  not  for  long ;  then 
the  fifths  and  the  thirds.  The  '  chord  of  the  tonic '  is  a 
joy ;  but,  after  a  sufficient  cultivation,  a  closer  harmony  is 
demanded,  until  at  last,  positive  discords  greatly  heighten  the 
effect.  So,  again,  in  melody,  the  succession  must  be  simple, 
and  the  recurrence  of  passages  frequent,  to  engage  the  inter- 
est of  the  multitude.  If  there  is  no  'tune,'  the  attention 
flags,  and,  instead  of  pleasure,  positive  distress  results.  Hence 
it  is  that  the  populace  are  always  calling  for  simple  airs,  in 
which  the  rhythm  is  so  marked  as  to  carry  head  and  feet  with 
the  movement ;  while  the  sonatas  of  Beethoven  and  the  mas- 
sive harmonies  of  Wagner  are  a  mystification  and  a  torture ; 
but  for  the  cultured  ear,  tune  is  no  necessity,  and  the  divine 
productions  of  the  great  masters  produce  a  '  joy  of  elevated 
thought.'  The  simple  child-like  satisfacjtiw*?-??;3tnai^he  result 
of  an  exuberance  ready  to  burst  forth  at  any  sign  —  gives  place 
to  a  rational  elevation,  which  revels  in  minor  effects,  and  causes 


2l6  MECHANISM    AND    PERSONALITY. 

the  emotional  nature  to  stand  on  tiptoe,  striving  vainly  to  look 
into  the  infinite  and  mystical,  with  a  'joy  which  is  akin  to  woe.' 
Feeling  thus  mounts  up,  as  if  to  seek  another  world,  and 
pleasure  and  pain  strike  hands. 

Sensation  in  Vision  is  extremely  complex.  Undoubtedly 
light  —  marvellously  rich  in  color  components  —  and  its  nega- 
tion, darkness,  with  its  infinite  gradations  of  shade  and  shadow, 
furnish  the  material  out  of  which  the  self  evolves  beauty  of 
form  and  symmetry,  with  all  the  charming  effects  in  color. 
How,  is  quite  another  question,  and  raises  many  points  by  no 
means  settled.  There  is  difficulty  enough  in  determining  how 
the  eye  acquaints  us  with  the  mere  facts  of  the  external  world, 
without  the  farther  inquiry  as  to  how  the  emotive  elements  of 
grace  and  beauty  emerge.  It  is  not  to  be  seriously  questioned, 
—  no  system  of  Idealism  will  ever  change  the  conviction  that 
there  is  an  objective  reality  which  answers  to  the  feeling  of 
truth  and  beauty  in  the  mind.  As  Lotze  says,  "  There  is  an 
inherent  order  in  things  :  the  forms  which  they  lead  us  to  real- 
ize or  to  rejoice  in  as  manifested  in  nature,  are  modes  of  rela- 
tion of  the  manifold  into  the  joy  of  which  we  are  able  to  enter." 
He  carries  the  thought  further :  "  Just  as  there  is  no  sense- 
perception  without  its  share  of  feeling,  so,  too,  the  notion  of  a 
relationship  never  rises  within  us  without  our  testing  the  special 
degree  of  pleasure  or  of  pain  which  this  relationship  must 
confer  on  the  two  things  between  which  it  exists.  We  never 
notice  identity  without  at  least  a  faint  recollection  of  the  bless- 
edness of  peace,  or  see  contrast  without  a  glimpse,  sometimes 
of  the  hatefulness  of  enmity,  sometimes  of  the  enjoyment  that 
springs  from  the  mutual  contemplation  of  opposites  ;  we  cannot 
discern  equipoise,  symmetry,  rigidity  of  contour,  without,  as  we 
gaze,  being  stirred  by  manifold  pain  and  pleasure  of  secure 
repose,  of  bondage  under  fixed  laws,  or  of  limitation  and  con- 
finement. The  world  becomes  alive  to  us  through  this  power 
to  see  in  forms  the  joy  and  sorrow  of  existence  that  they  hide ; 


FEELING.  217 

and  there  is  no  shape  so  coy  that  our  fancy  cannot  sympatheti- 
cally enter  it." 

How  far  this  is  fancy,  how  far  sober  reality,  we  need  not  stop 
to  inquire ;  but  it  is  easy  to  carry  the  subjective  element  to 
such  an  extreme  as  to  underrate  or  even  lose  sight  of  the  Infi- 
nite Personality  which  gives  reality  to  Nature.  It  has  not 
been  the  design  of  science,  but  the  indirect  result  of  our  better 
knowledge  of  the  mechanism  of  nature  that  has  had  the  effect 
of  driving  out  of  the  hearts  of  too  many  people  that  lively  sym- 
pathy which  men  in  the  earlier  ages  of  the  world  manifested 
for  her  power  and  beauty. 

"  The  world  is  too  much  with  us :  late  and  soon, 
Getting  and  spending,  we  lay  waste  our  powers  : 
Little  we  see  in  Nature  that  is  ours; 
We  have  given  our  hearts  away,  a  sordid  boon ! 
This  sea  that  bares  her  bosom  to  the  moon; 
The  winds  that  will  be  howling  at  all  hours, 
And  are  up-gathered  now  like  sleeping  flowers; 
For  this,  for  everything,  we  are  out  of  tune; 
It  moves  us  not.  —  Great  God  !     I'd  rather  be 
A  Pagan  suckled  in  a  creed  out  worn : 
So  might  I,  standing  on  this  pleasant  lea, 
Have  glimpses  that  would  make  me  less  forlorn ; 
Have  sight  of  Proteus  rising  from  the  sea; 
Or  hear  old  Triton  blow  his  wreathed  horn." 

Sight  is  the  most  accurate  and  definite  of  all  the  senses,  and 
yet  the  information  given  us  by  the  eye  comes  to  us  through 
more  apparently  incompatible  data  than  in  any  other  sense. 
In  the  first  place,  the  image  on  the  retina  reverses  everything, 
making  up  down,  and  right  left.  This  at  one  time  was  a 
puzzle,  though  it  has  now  pretty  well  passed  out  of  discussion, 
since  we  have  come  to  reflect  that  we  do  not  see  the  image  at 
all  in  consciousness,  and  would  never  have  known  of  the  inver- 
sion except  for  the  investigations  of  the  physiologists.  As  we 
have  seen,  there  need  be  no  possible  likenesses  in  the  molec- 


2l8  MECHANISM    AND    PERSONALITY. 

ular  reactions  of  the  brain-cells  to  actual  objects  in  nature,  and 
if  there  were,  nothing  would  be  explained. 

Again,  we  have  that  whole  class  of  what  we  call  illusions  in 
perspective,  —  illusions,  however,  without  which  we  could  really 
see  nothing  in  true  relation.  But,  truth  to  say,  they  ought  to 
be  sufficiently  confounding  to  the  Gradgrinds,  who  insist  upon 
1  facts,  nothing  but  facts.'  Let  one  look  at  the  setting  sun, 
when  broken  clouds  are  interposed,  and  see  the  streaks  of  light 
raying  out,  fan-shaped,  sometimes  through  a  whole  semi-circum- 
ference. The  eye  tells  us  that  they  are  inclined  to  each  other 
in  every  possible  angle,  and  yet  they  are  really  parallel ;  and 
so,  in  one  degree  or  another,  it  is  with  the  whole  range  of 
vision.  These  illusions,  everywhere  existing  unobserved  in 
nature,  may  be  made  apparent  by  a  little  artifice.  Lines 
exactly  parallel  may  be  easily  made  to  look  inclined,  or  curved, 
by  means  of  auxiliary  lines ;  and  curved  lines  made  to  appear 
parallel  by  the  position  of  the  eye.  So  also  straight  lines  may 
look  broken ;  angles,  larger  or  smaller  than  they  really  are. 

As  an  illustration  of  how  the  judgment  may  be  deceived  in 
vision  by  insignificant  means,  take  this  figure. 


\ 


The  horizontal  lines  are  of  equal  length,  but  they  do  not 
appear  so. 

In  the  four  following  figures,  in  which  the  principal  lines  in 
each  form  the  same-sized  square,  the  eye  pronounces  unreliable 
judgments. 

It  thus  appears  that  our  sensations  in  vision  are  immensely 


FEELING. 


2I9 


composite,  and  full  of  aberrancies ;  but,  doubtless,  if  it  were 
not  so,  effective  vision  would  be  impossible ;  and  we  may  be 
thankful  that  those  inflexible  souls  who  would  reduce  the  uni- 


\/ 


\/ 


\/\/ 


\ 

\ 

\ 

NV 

\ 

\ 

\ 

\ 

\ 

7 

\ 


\ 


\ 


verse  to  square  and  plummet  are  restricted  to  an  exercise  of 
their  recalcitrant  predilections  without  the  power  to  set  the 
world  right  after  their  purblind  fancy. 


22O  MECHANISM    AND    PERSONALITY. 


CHAPTER  XXI. 

FEELING   (continued). 

Art.  Ideal  element.  Sculpture.  Painting.  Music.  Architecture. 
Poetry.  .  Evolution  of  ethical  feeling.  The  good.  Ethical  treatment 
reserved  to  later  stage. 

IN  treating  of  the  Imagination  we  saw  that  the  Art-world  is 
primarily  indebted  to  that  original  and  creative  power  for 
its  existence ;  but  it  is  scarcely  less  dependent  upon  feeling. 
The  Imagination  is  a  form  of  cognition,  and  as  such  is  cold 
and  powerless.  All  warmth  and  intensity  must  come  from  the 
emotional  element  of  our  nature,  and  thought  would  have  no 
value  did  it  not  reach  down  and  quicken  the  pulsations  of  the 
heart.  If  one  could,  in  thought,  penetrate  and  construe  every- 
thing, but  had  no  interest  in  the  result,  either  pleasurable  or 
painful,  manifestly  nothing  would  have  value,  and  there  would 
be  no  inducement  for  the  self —  perhaps  no  power  —  to  prefer 
one  thing  to  another,  or  to  distinguish  itself  from  augrft  else  : 
indeed,  the  very  hypothesis  is  shown  to  be  inadmissible  by  the 
attempt  to  entertain  it. 

It  is  thus  apparent  how  large  a  part  the  emotional  nature  of 
an  artist  or  a  poet  must  play  in  any  effective  work.  It  is  not 
always  easy  to  point  out  the  sentient  element  which  has  moved 
the  imagination  in  the  production  of  a  particular  work,  nor 
wherein  lurks  the  subtle  effect  in  the  work  itself;  but  it  must 
have  left  its  impress  behind,  or  it  will  not  move  the  heart  or  fix 
the  attention  of  another.  Hence  it  is  that  the  artist  and  the 
poet  must  put  their  own  best  emotions  in  their  work,  or  they 
will  fail  to  move  their  fellow-men.  They  must  be  able  to  catch 


FEELING.  221 

and  fix  the  subtle  power  and  pathos  which  are  ever  appealing 
to  us  for  recognition  in  the  processes  of  nature,  and  in  human 
conduct,  and  so  help  others  whose  sensibilities  are  less  acute, 
or  whose  training  is  deficient,  to  feel  the  truth  and  beauty  of 
the  world-work  spread  out  before  us  by  the  Ineffable  Artist. 

It  is  not  that  the  artist  is  to  simply  reproduce  the  truth,  or 
the  beauty,  which  he  sees  in  the  material  world,  or  in  human 
conduct ;  for,  manifestly,  that  would  help  nobody  to  see  or 
feel,  that  would  leave  one  still  to  discern  for  oneself;  but  the 
artist  must  present  the  subject  of  his  work  with  his  own  per- 
sonal factor  through  and  through  it,  if  he  would  give  it  value. 
This  is  what  is  called  '  idealizing ' ;  this  is  the  part  which  the 
imagination,  the  original  and  creative  factor,  plays.  It  is  not 
that  one  is  expected  to  admire,  or  wonder'  at  the  power  and 
cleverness  of  the  artist,  but  to  hear  or  see  his  work  with  an 
elevation  of  heart  and  soul,  looking  through  the  work  itself, 
and  the  artist's  treatment,  to  celestial  wonders  beyond.  Thus 
mere  imitation  is  not  Art ;  it  is  the  base  and  counterfeit  in  Art. 
And  yet,  the  personal  element  must  not  be  obtruded.  It  must 
be  the  '  True  '  and  the  '  Beautiful '  that  one  feels,  not  the  artist ; 
the  personal  element  is  in  the  handling  by  which  one  is  made 
to  feel  what  would  otherwise  escape  one.  There  is  time  and 
opportunity  enough  to  admire  the  artist,  but  it  is  after  the 
pleasure  his  art  has  called  forth  has  had  free  scope. 

The  artist  cannot  invent  his  truth,  nor  his  beauty ;  he  must 
take  them  from  the  '  pattern  in  the  mount,'  and  so  it  is  that  he 
must  study  the  form  and  movement  of  the  actual ;  but  his 
material  in  hand,  it  is  for  him  to  produce  new  effects,  and 
touch  the  heart  by  presenting  the  pleasing  and  pathetic  under 
new  conditions,  and  with  personal  emphasis.  It  is  herein  that 
man  shows  his  superiority  over  nature ;  that  is,  nature  in  its 
mechanical  aspect.  He  finds  himself  no  longer  bound,  but 
begins  himself  to  devise  and  create.  Hence  it  is  that  in  true 
art  there  must  always  be  the  real  and  the  ideal ;  but  the  real  is 


222  MECHANISM    AND    PERSONALITY. 

the  work  of  the  bondsman  who  must  do  his  task ;  the  ideal  is 
the  work  of  the  freeman  who  but  uses  the  drudge  to  supply 
him  with  the  material  by  which  he  bodies  forth  thoughts  before 
unthought,  and  songs  till  then  unsung.  An  artist  must  be  a 
realist,  but  if  that  be  all,  his  work  is  only  that  of  a  faithful  and 
intelligent  copyist ;  it  is  as  an  idealist  that  the  freedom  and 
power  of  genius  opens  to  us  the  world  of  unspeakable  things. 

It  is  just  for  this  reason  that  the  sculptor  is  so  restricted  in 
his  art.  He  works  in  all  three  of  the  spatial  dimensions,  and 
so,  in  space-form,  his  work  must  be  literally  and  exactly  real. 
Happily  for  him  he  cannot  carry  the  realistic  element  further. 
He  cannot  produce  flesh  tints,  expressions  of  the  eye,  nor  any 
of  the  endless  color  effects.  If  he  could,  he  would  make  mon- 
sters ;  we  could  not  endure  for  long  a  dead,  false  thing  so 
entirely  like  a  human  being  or  any  real  animal  as  to  actually 
deceive  us.  We  hate  what  seems  to  set  itself  up  for  true,  and 
is  not ;  but  we  only  begin  to  hate  it,  when  it  begins  to  so  simu- 
late what  is  real  and  we  feel  ourselves  in  danger  of  mistaking 
the  false  for  the  true.  There  is  no  danger  of  mistaking  the 
Venus  of  Milo  or  the  Greek  Slave  for  real  women,  and  so  we 
greet  them  with  a  glow  of  pure  emotion ;  but  if  we,  for  the 
moment,  could  not  distinguish  them  from  living  forms,  we 
should  turn  our  eyes  away  in  confusion.  It  is  the  non-realistic, 
or  preter-realistic  factor  remaining  to  the  sculptor  that  makes 
his  art  possible. 

In  painting,  the  artist  has  but  two  dimensions  possible  to 
him ;  and  thus  he  has,  in  the  start,  a  great  advantage  over  the 
plastic  arts  in  the  necessity  for  the  ideal  creation  of  the  third 
dimension.  It  is  just  by  virtue  of  this  restriction  —  this  forced 
exclusion  from  a  fatal  realism  —  that  painting  gets  its  compara- 
tive freedom  from  the  trammels  which  encompass  sculpture,  and 
finds  a  world  of  ideal  possibilities  opened  to  it.  There  is,  how- 
ever, an  element  of  realism  left  it,  which  is  its  snare,  —  the 
power  to  delineate  the  texture  and  tint  of  the  human  form,  and 


FEELING.  223 

the  expressions  of  human  emotion ;  and  it  must  be  confessed 
that  artists  have  used  their  power  in  this  regard  to  the  serious 
hurt  of  their  art.  But  this  apart,  the  high  idealism  of  the 
painter,  founded  on  a  true,  pure  realism,  has  opened  up  to  us  a 
world  of  transcendental  beauty  and  excellence. 

The  poet  gains  greater  freedom  still,  because  he  has  no 
trammels  of  space  whatever ;  and  so  is  released  from  all  possi- 
ble realism  of  external  form  and  color.  His  is  the  ideal  world 
indeed ;  but  he,  too,  has  his  snare  in  a  subjective  realism 
gathered  up  in  words.  By  means  of  these  he  causes  the  actual 
world  of  things  and  events  to  pass  before  the  mind  and  touch 
the  heart.  He,  too,  has  often  faulted  by  presenting  a  gross 
and  impure  realism  in  seductive  guise ;  and  in  so  far  has 
debased  his  muse. 

In  music  the  possibility  of  realism  is  almost  wholly  cut  off. 
The  musician,  however  much  he  may  try,  cannot  cause  the  real 
world  of  object  or  action  to  pass  before  the  mind.  In  so-called 
descriptive  music  there  is  never  more  than  a  faint  suggestion 
of  a  real  action,  and  none  whatever  of  objects.  The  sounds  of 
nature  are  indeed  sometimes  imitated,  in  a  way,  by  the  com- 
poser; such  as  the  song  of  birds,  the  rush  and  roar  of  the 
elements,  the  clank  and  jar  of  machinery ;  but  it  is  a  hazardous 
domain,  and  if  not  carefully  handled  results  in  the  ridiculous 
and  vulgar.  In  the  hands  of  the  great  composers  admirable 
effects  are  thus  produced,  but  such  ventures  at  imitations  are 
always  highly  idealized,  and  helped  out  by  suggestions  from 
word  and  action.  The  '  anvil  chorus  '  in  '  Trovatore  '  is  a  suc- 
cess, but  nobody  would  ever  have  known  what  it  really  meant 
except  for  its  setting ;  and  so  in  the  '  hailstone  chorus '  of  the 
'  Israel  in  Egypt '  there  is  only  an  appropriateness  in  the  music, 
and  in  no  sense  an  imitation  of  the  fact  in  nature ;  while  in 
such  works  as  the  <  Pastorale  '  the  likenesses  are  purely  fanciful. 

Architecture  is  even  more  tied  down  to  the  real  than  sculp- 
ture, since  the  unideal  condition  of  use  enters  in  such  large 


224  MECHANISM   AND    PERSONALITY. 

degree ;  but  it  has,  on  the  other  hand,  a  sweep  and  freedom 
denied  the  sculptor,  in  that  it  need  not  be  imitative,  and  may 
mount  up  in  power  and  massiveness  to  the  stupendous  and 
sublime. 

There  is,  then,  a  right  place  for  realism  in  art,  and  there 
could  be  no  art  without  it ;  but  it  is  not  the  factor  which  gives 
value  to  the  work  of  genius,  and  elevates  and  refines  our  man- 
hood. It  is  the  region  of  determinism,  in  itself,  inflexible  and 
expressionless.  It  is  not  until  the  free  creative  power  of  per- 
sonality breathes  into  it  the  living  spirit,  that  truth  and  beauty 
spring  forth  to  charm  and  elevate.  It  is  thus  we  see  how  tran- 
scendent the  psychical  factor  of  personality  is,  as  compared  with 
the  stark  and  rigid  facts  of  mechanical  phenomena. 

The  five  grand  divisions  of  art,  'as  commonly  reckoned,  — 
Architecture,  Sculpture,  Painting,  Poetry,  and  Music,  —  fall  into 
two  distinct  groups  with  respect  to  space  and  time :  the  first 
three  being  dependent  upon  space-form,  and  the  last  two 
upon  time-form.  The  first  group  —  Architecture,  Sculpture, 
and  Painting  —  having  definite  spatial  limitations,  are  utterly 
immobile  and  rigid  :  the  second  group  —  Poetry  and  Music  — 
untrammeled  by  place-restrictions,  are  free  and  flowing,  —  find- 
ing their  very  life  in  rhythmic  movement  and  sequence.  This 
emancipation  from  the  bondage  of  localization  raises  these  two 
rhythmic  arts  far  above  the  space-clogged  group ;  but  poetry  is 
entitled  to  a  pre-eminence  exclusively  its  own,  in  that  it  compels 
the  universal  round  of  feeling  to  its  uses,  finding  itself  equally 
at  home  in  all  three  of  the  great  domains,  rational,  esthetic,  and 
moral ;  while  all  the  others  are  almost  wholly  restricted  to  the 
one  esthetic  mode.  It  is  not  to  be  denied  that  the  truest  work 
of  the  poetic  art  is  when  the  esthetic  factor  is  dominant ;  but 
there  is  much  high,  true  poetry  founded  chiefly  in  the  sense  of 
the  true,  as  well  as  much  that  has  the  feeling  of  holiness  and 
purity  for  its  characteristic  motive.  The  graphic  and  plastic 
arts  do  unquestionably  evoke  feelings,  both  of  the  true  and 


FEELING.  225 

the  good ;  but  such  feeling  is  secondary  in  character,  arising 
through  perception  which  is  primarily  esthetic. 

Poetry  has  still  another  prerogative  which  sets  it  apart  from 
and  above  all  the  other  arts  ;  the  catholicity  of  its  content.  It 
uses  freely,  and  as  of  right,  the  whole  round  of  material  wrought 
upon  by  all  the  other  arts ;  with  a  world  of  matter  still  beyond 
exclusively  its  own.  Architecture,  it  is  true,  makes  use  of 
sculpture  and  painting  to  a  limited  extent,  and  in  an  auxiliary 
way ;  and  music  borrows  the  help  of  poetry  at  times  ;  but  the 
poetic  muse  seizes  upon,  and  passes  through  her  alembic,  all 
that  appeals  to  human  consciousness  in  nature  and  in  art.  She 
claims  as  her  own  a  share  of  musical  effect  in  her  numbers,  — 
revels  in  the  'long-drawn  aisle,  and  fretted  vault,'  —  not  only 
gazes  upon  the  graver's  finished  work,  but  listens  to  the  click  of 
his  chisel,  and  peers  in  upon  the  flood  of  high  emotion  which 
fills  him  with  joy,  while  he  compels  the  marble  to  show  forth 
the  image  in  his  soul.  To  the  poet  everything  is  laid  bare,  the 
conflict  of  motives,  —  the  sweep  and  rush  of  passion,  —  the 
pathos  and  joy,  hate  and  despair,  sweetness  and  rest,  on  earth 
and  in  the  far  beyond.  The  poet  is  only  limited  by  his  own 
soul-power,  and  his  genius  of  expression. 

We  saw  that  Truth  is  disclosed  to  us  through  the  understand- 
ing, and,  finding  it  pleasing,  there  is  built  up  in  us,  little  by  lit- 
tle, an  emotional  element  which  gives  it  value,  and  so  the  love 
of  it  becomes  a  high,  pure  power  which  moves  the  self  when- 
ever any  new  manifestation  is  discovered.  In  like  way  the 
love  of  the  Beautiful,  and  of  the  Good  is  developed. 

In  the  beginning  we  have  no  knowledge  of  what  is  beautiful, 
or  what  is  good ;  and  so,  of  course,  no  feeling  for  either.  We 
have  simply  the  capacity  for  this,  as  for  any  other  order  of 
knowledge,  varying  in  degree  for  different  persons ;  and  the 
development  proceeds  as  a  reaction  to  proper  stimuli,  only 
remembering  that  in  the  vital  functions  which  have  to  do  with 
purely  sensuous  feeling,  the  response  is  immediate,  whereas, 


226  MECHANISM    AND    PERSONALITY. 

here  the  understanding  must  first  construe,  and  then  the  sensi- 
bilities respond.  Thus  it  is  that  nature  has  made  us  directly 
answerable  for  the  degree  and  nature  of  our  esthetic  and  moral 
emotions.  If  the  understanding  does  not  concern  itself  to  dis- 
cover what  is  beautiful  and  what  is  good,  there  will  be  no 
response  of  the  heart  upon  the  presentation  of  either  the  one 
or  the  other.  There  is  no  one,  it  is  true,  so  low  in  the  scale  of 
being  as  to  be  absolutely  destitute  of  a  sense  of  beauty  and  of 
right ;  but  there  is  a  wide  range  in  degree,  chiefly  due  to  cul- 
tivation. Especially  is  this  true  of  the  beautiful.  In  moral 
feeling  the  scale  is  much  narrower,  and  probably  begins  lower 
down ;  but  the  general  truth  is  the  same.  If  one  has  no  soul 
for  beauty,  it  is  because  one  has  failed  to  open  one's  eyes  to 
nature,  and  to  study  her  wondrous  ways ;  and  if  one  is  insensi- 
ble to  the  charms  of  art,  it  is  because  one  has  neglected, 
through  necessity  or  inclination,  to  study  the  works  of  genius. 
It  is  to  be  noted,  however,  that  the  intensity  of  esthetic  feeling, 
with  respect  to  what  is  really  beautiful,  is  by  no  means  strictly 
in  the  ratio  of  the  development  of  the  understanding.  One 
may  feel  strongly,  what  one  takes  to  be  beautiful,  though  it  be 
decidedly  vulgar  when  brought  to  the  test  of  tin  educated 
standard.  We  have  in  such  case  a  powerful  native  susceptibil- 
ity, but  a  lack  of  knowledge,  and  so  a  lack  of  refinement  in  the 
emotion.  The  intellect  has  given  the  object  a  false  value,  and 
the  emotive-factor  has  simply  accepted  the  purported  worth. 
The  self  is  then  powerful,  but  not  true.  That  there  is  an  actual 
standard  of  beauty,  notwithstanding  the  wide  range  of  popular 
differences  in  appreciation,  is  shown  by  the  fact,  that  all  who 
set  themselves  to  study  the  subject  —  all  who  have  the  oppor- 
tunity and  inclination  to  cultivate  their  taste  in  nature  and  art 
—  steadily  ascend  towards  an  agreement ;  and  although  there 
never  is  entire  accord  in  the  higher  plane  of  culture,  the  differ- 
ences become  more  and  more  minute,  with  a  vast  range  of 
thorough  agreement  with  respect  to  the  lower  end  of  the  scale. 


FEELING.  227 

With  regard  to  the  Good,  the  difference  between  the  lowest 
and  highest  limits,  is  far  less  than  in  the  True  or  the  Beautiful. 
This  is,  perhaps,  because  of  the  far  greater  sharpness  of  the 
psychical  factor  which  gives  it  character.  Cognition  and  sen- 
sation, which  respectively  characterize  rational  and  esthetic  feel- 
ing, spread  themselves  over  the  whole  psychical  area,  in  a  con- 
tinuous and  progressive  way ;  whereas  will,  never  absent,  it  is 
true,  is  in  its  nature  decisive  and  instantaneous.  More  than 
this,  morality,  while  discoverable  only  in  action,  is  by  no  means 
discoverable  in  all  actions,  but  is  confined  to  such  conduct  as 
concerns  the  rights  and  well-being  of  our  fellow-men,  and  our 
relations  to  the  All- Father.  Thus  it  is  that  the  area  in  which 
differences  of  opinion  obtain  as  to  what  is  moral  and  what  is 
not,  is  greatly  narrowed ;  but,  perhaps,  on  the  other  hand,  it  is 
just  because  of  this  comparative  definiteness  that  its  universality 
and  depth  are  increased.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  there  are  no 
races  of  men,  and  no  individuals  among  men,  in  possession  of 
ordinary  psychical  activities,  without  a  fairly  definite  standard  of 
morality,  and  some  corresponding  development  of  ethical  sen- 
sibility. Men  everywhere,  and  in  all  time,  have  the  notion 
expressed  by  the  word  '  ought,'  in  which  a  necessary  idea  of 
obligation  is  imbedded.  It  is  the  feeling  lying  behind  it,  which 
gives  value  to  the  particular  action  towards  which  the  '  ought ' 
points ;  and  it  is  just  in  the  right  development  of  such  feeling 
that  man's  nature  reaches  its  supreme  excellence.  Furthermore, 
it  is  in  this  one  psychical  mode  alone  —  the  volitive  —  which 
gives  character  to  moral  feeling,  that  man  in  any  right  sense 
has  the  slightest  possible  power.  It  is  only  by  means  of  this 
self-determining  factor  that  the  apparently  independent  action 
in  sensation  and  cognition  discovers  itself;  they  being,  as  such, 
absolutely  bound.  And  so  it  appears,  that  this  highest  possible 
excellence  and  worth  to  which  man  can  attain,  is  exactly  that 
which  depends  primarily  on  consciously  directed  self-activity ; 


228  MECHANISM    AND    PERSONALITY. 

that  is  to  say,  what  he  feels  he  ought  to  do  is  just  what  he  is 
free,  beyond  all  else,  actually  to  do. 

In  the  nature  of  the  case,  the  self  must  be  called  upon  to 
recognize  the  fact  of  beauty  in  the  world,  and  cannot  well  help 
building  up  an  esthetic  power  in  the  personality ;  and  so  also 
with  rational  feeling :  and  while  it  feels,  in  cultivating  a  higher 
and  truer  esthetic  and  rational  feeling,  that  it  is,  in  so  far, 
elevated  and  refined,  it  does  not  feel  it  to  be  a  duty,  such  as 
brings  with  the  neglect  a  criminal  condemnation,  even  though 
it  wholly  fail  to  strive  for  such  elevation  of  nature  ;  whereas,  in 
moral  action,  a  factor  entirely  peculiar  to  it  must  be  recognized, 
which  assumes  to  command  absolutely,  '  Thou  shalt '  or  '  Thou 
shalt  not'  (the  (  Categorical  Imperative'  of  Kant),  whenever 
an  act  involving  right  or  wrong  is  in  issue.  This  is  undoubtedly 
the  reaction  of  the  moral  feeling,  giving  especial  value  to  moral 
action ;  but  why  should  there  be  this  altogether  peculiar  factor 
acting  with  an  authority  which  we  have  no  consciousness  of 
having  committed  to  it,  but  which  we  do  not  in  the  least  ques- 
tion ?  The  only  answer  which  seems  to  meet  the  case  fairly  is, 
that  it  comes  from  the  same  source  whence  we  are  given  con- 
sciousness, memory,  and  imagination ;  and  as  they  are  clearly 
for  an  end,  this  must  be  also ;  that  end  being  plainly  to  impel 
men  to  recognize  and  pursue  the  paramount  end  of  conscious, 
personality. 


THE    WILL.  229 


CHAPTER  XXII. 

THE   WILL. 

Elementary  effort.  Emerges  in  conscious  volition.  Much  that  is  com- 
monly accounted  free,  mechanical.  Liberty  restricted  to  purposive  epoch. 
Inhibitory  functions.  The  office  of  the  will  in  developing  emotional 
nature.  Development  of  volitional  powers.  Moral  aspect  of  the  will. 
Penitence. 

FROM  the  beginning  of  our  inquiry  we  have  been  compelled 
to  assume  a  mode  of  the  personality  which  makes  self- 
movement  possible.  The  discovery  of  meaning  would  never,  of 
itself,  be  more  than  a  dry,  cold,  impassive  fact.  It  could  have 
no  value,  and  no  end,  so  long  as  it  remained  pure  meaning,  if 
that  were  possible.  To  pure  feeling,  assuming  such  a  filing 
possible,  we  should  have  to  concede  value,  it  is  true ;  but  how- 
ever intense  it  might  be,  there  is  no  power  of  conceiving  it  as 
doing  anything  as  such.  The  discovery  of  meaning  makes 
plain  how  or  why  a  certain  course  of  action  would  have  a  cer- 
tain result ;  and  feeling  makes  such  possible  result  desirable ; 
but  neither  of  these  are  more  than  modes  of  the  self,  and  we 
cannot  conceive  of  a  mode  in  itself,  doing  anything  whatever. 
The  ability,  the  power,  the  instrument  by  which  the  subject 
enjoys  a  capability,  is  still  but  an  instrument,  and  cannot  act 
of  itself  to  make  or  unmake  anything ;  the  subject  must  put  the 
capacity  to  its  use.  The  subject  which  enjoys  the  capacity  for 
the  discovery  of  meaning,  and  of  being  affected  by  the  action 
of  stimuli,  i.e.  of  knowing  and  feeling,  is  the  self ;  but  the  mind 
does  not  construe,  and  the  feeling  does  not  feel :  the  self  con- 
strues through  the  mental  powers,  and  feels  through  the  sensi- 


23O  MECHANISM   AND    PERSONALITY. 

bilities.  But  now,  though  the  self  did  understand,  and  did  feel, 
the  results  would  but  be  its  states,  and  would  stand  apart  for- 
ever, if  the  capacities  of  the  self  ended  with  these.  We  may 
conceive  of  the  self  as  knowing  the  feeling  and  in  some  way, 
perhaps,  feeling  the  knowledge ;  but,  unless  we  grant  a  further 
capability,  there  could  be  no  other  result  than  that  the  self 
should  simply  go  on  knowing  and  feeling.  Hence  the  absolute 
demand,  if  we  are  to  have  self-action  at  all,  for  a  power  to  gov- 
ern and  control  the  vasco-motor  system ;  and  such  power  we 
indisputably  know  in  consciousness,  and  have  been  all  along 
compelled  to  recognize.  This  is  the  conative  mode  of  the  self. 
Its  characteristic  is  energy ;  its  office  is  to  compel  the  actual 
to  emerge  from  the  possible ;  and  its  end,  self-development. 
In  this  mode  of  the  self  we  have  an  intuitive  apprehension  of 
causation,  —  of  one  thing  compelling  another.  Through  it  is 
opened  up  to  us  the  whole  domain  of  the  '  Becoming,'  and  the 
psychical-nexus  between  the  actual  and  possible,  as  a  simple 
fact,  is  discovered  to  us.  All  self-ordered  change  —  every 
self-determined  and  self-enforced  modification  of  the  person- 
ality —  is  accomplished  through  its  instrumentality.  By  cogni- 
tion we  are  made  conscious  of  what  is ;  by  sensation,  how  we 
are  affected  by  the  existent ;  and  by  conation,  we  fit  ourselves 
to  the  discovered  conditions. 

As  we  have  said,  in  this  ordering  of  self  to  meet  new  condi- 
tions, and  the  consciousness  of  a  compulsory  nexus  in  the  pro- 
cess of  such  adaptation,  we  have  an  intuition  of  cause.  In  the 
consciousness  of  effort  throughout  the  process,  we  have  an 
intuition  of  power  or  energy.  The  projection  of  these  notions 
into  all  cosmical  order,  gives  rise  to  these  concepts  as  univer- 
sally necessary  in  the  mechanism  of  nature ;  and  thus  it  must 
be  conceded  that  both  cause  and  energy,  as  manifested  in  the 
cosmos,  have  their  ground  in  personality. 

But  as  sensation  in  its  basic  sense  is  not  yet  entitled  to  be 
called  feeling,  and  cognition  in  its  elementary  form  is  only  an 


THE    WILL.  231 

adumbration  of  specific  thought,  so  conation,  in  its  most  general 
sense,  is  not  will.  All  three  of  these  fundamental  self-modes 
are  active  long  before  the  self  is  illuminated  by  the  light  of 
consciousness ;  that  is,  all  along  through  the  primitive  sub-con- 
scious period  :  and  in  their  elementary  forms  they  continue  to 
exert  their  activities  even  in  the  highest  stages  of  self-directed 
life.  Feeling  gains  its  title  when  the  self  enters  upon  the  con- 
scious use  of  the  sensibilities ;  and  thought  claims  recognition 
when  the  self  uses  the  cognitive  power  to  think ;  and  so  in  like 
way,  will  is  finally  differentiated,  and  entitled  to  its  name,  only, 
when  it  consciously  enters  upon  the  use  of,  and  actively  em- 
ploys, the  conative,  —  the  energizing,  causative  mode  of  the 
personality. 

This,  rightly  understood,  clears  the  way  of  much  popular 
error  concerning  the  will.  The  far  greater  part  of  our  actions 
are  not  volitive.  The  conative  mode  of  the  self  has  its  auto- 
matic element  as  much  as  the  other  two  modes.  Indeed,  as 
we  have  seen  from  the  beginning,  any  automatic  action  carries 
with  it  all  three  of  these  as  factors.  If  the  question  presents 
itself  as  to  whether  I  shall  remain  where  I  now  am,  or  walk 
into  the  next  room,  I  feel  that  I  am  at  liberty  to  will  to  do  it 
or  not ;  but  from  the  moment  I  determine  to  do  it,  the  move- 
ment which  results  will  be  almost  wholly  automatic.  It  is  not 
at  all  that  I  am  free  to  go  to  the  other  room  or  not ;  but 
whether  I  am  free  to  will  to  go  or  not.  From  the  instant  the 
determination  is  arrived  at,  the  movement,  while  due  to  the 
conative  mode  of  the  self,  is  purely  mechanical ;  except  in  so 
far  as  any  new  determination  may  enter  it.  The  mandate  of  the 
will  no  more  raises  my  arm  than  the  '  heave '  of  a  boatswain 
raises  an  anchor.  This  self- determining  activity  is  the  Will. 

All  bodily  movements  in  any  wise  dependent  upon  volition, 
and  now  become  automatic,  were  in  their  inception  voli- 
tive,— -the  will,  so  to  speak,  standing  by  to  issue  command 
after  command,  until  the  mechanism  was  taught  to  do  its  work, 


232  MECHANISM   AND    PERSONALITY. 

and  the  will  freed  for  higher  duties.  It  must  not  be  under- 
stood, of  course,  that  the  whole  work  was,  or  even  can  be,  voli- 
tive  purely.  Nothing  whatever  could  have  been  accomplished 
under  such  a  condition.  The  will  is,  if  we  may  so  express  it, 
the  trigger  of  the  conative  mode,  obedient  to  the  finger-touch 
of  the  self,  and  its  proper  functions  begin  and  end  with  such 
touch ;  but  its  effect  is  to  set  free,  or  check,  the  energizing 
mechanism  of  the  conative  mode  in  certain  specific  directions. 
Without  this  mechanical  factor,  gratuitously  furnished  in  the 
beginning  in  an  inchoate  form,  no  possible  work  could  be 
accomplished. 

But  it  must  also  be  carefully  borne  in  mind  that  the  person- 
ality is  not  originally  dependent  upon  the  volitive  activities. 
All  that  vital  mechanism,  unknown  to  and  out  of  the  reach  of 
the  conscious  self,  must  be  pre-supposed ;  and  though  silent 
and  unthought  upon,  it  never  for  a  moment  ceases  to  make 
possible  the  higher  stages  of  personal  development. 

Now,  among  these  vital  functions,  and  long  antedating  any- 
thing like  clearly  construed  purposive  control,  we  must  recog- 
nize a  world  of  appetites,  desires,  impulses,  and  propulsions, 
which  push  us  on  into  life,  and  continue  to  sustain  us  in  it. 
In  and  through  this  whole  domain  we  must  recognize  the  in- 
choate volitive  mode.  It  is  impossible  to  fix  upon  the  epoch 
at  which  purposive  action  begins,  and  so  impossible  to  date  the 
accession  of  the  will  to  the  enjoyment  of  its  specific  preroga- 
tives ;  but  it  reaches  far  down  into  the  depths  of  propulsive 
development.  Until  the  will  really  enters  upon  its  purposive 
functions,  self-development  can  hardly  be  said  to  begin.  All 
that  has  gone  on  previous  to  that  epoch,  in  its  purely  purposive 
aspect,  must  be  credited  to  the  same  power  which  brought  into 
being,  and  still  sustains  the  vital  organism  itself. 

These  sensuous  impulses  still  continue  in  the  full  light  of 
consciousness,  and  unless  inhibited  throw  into  movement  the 
muscular  mechanism.  The  self  soon  learns  that  these  blind 


THE    WILL.  233 

impulsions  often  result  in  distress  and  loss;  and  that  it  is 
vested,  within  limits,  with  the  necessary  inhibitory  mechanism 
to  modify,  direct,  and  control  these  organic  and  propulsive 
movements.  The  function  of  volition  is  to  throw  into  action 
the  inhibitory  mechanism ;  and,  just  so  long  as  this  restrain- 
ing or  detached  state  continues,  the  impulsive  movement  is 
checked  or  defeated.  The  impulse  cannot  disregard  or  over- 
ride the  annulling  or  impeding  mechanism  so  long  as  the  self 
does  not,  so  to  speak,  touch  the  lever  to  throw  out  of  gear  this 
inhibitory  machinery.  The  prerogative  of  the  will  is,  in  this 
regard,  supreme,  provided  of  course  that  the  impulse  is  one 
fully  amenable  to  volition.  There  are  many,  as  repeatedly  said, 
not  so  answerable ;  and  these  will  go  on  to  produce  move- 
ment ;  but  the  self  is  provided  with  indirect  means  of  con- 
trolling even  those,  as,  for  example,  by  flight,  in  the  case  of 
most  solicitations.  Some,  as  a  desire  for  food,  being  vitally 
necessary,  never  yield  at  all. 

The  first  work  of  the  will,  then,  is  to  restrain,  direct,  and 
refine  the  original  impulsions  of  the  vital  organism,  —  a  work 
never  fully  accomplished,  but  continuing  to  the  end  of  life. 
The  strength  of  these  impulsions,  in  the  beginning,  is  due  to 
the  organism  as  inherited ;  but  by  use,  abuse,  or  suppression 
through  volition,  they  are  constantly  modified.  An  original 
impulse  is  blind,  —  an  instinct;  but  after  a  time,  its  end  is 
comprehended,  and  approved  or  disapproved,  given  value,  and 
it  becomes  properly  a  desire  or  aversion.  It  is  the  cognitive 
factor  which  lifts  it  out  of  the  list  of  impulses,  and  places 
it  in  the  category  of  desire.  It  has  now  become  a  trained  ser- 
vitor, to  be  intelligently  used  in  the  higher  work  of  the  person- 
ality ;  or,  if  neglected,  a  refractory  and  heady  dependent,  often 
riotous  and  troublesome.  This  work  of  developing  the  ener- 
gies of  the  organism  is  the  immediate  result  of  self-determina- 
tion through  the  proper  use  of  volition.  The  lever,  by  which 
certain  sets  of  energies  are  thrown  in  or  out  of  action,  is  the 


234  MECHANISM   AND    PERSONALITY. 

will  in  the  hand  of  the  self;  and  in  the  ratio  of  the  decision 
and  firmness  in  its  use,  the  results  will  be  excellent. 

So  far,  we  have  been  speaking  of  the  action  of  the  will  in 
regard  to  sensuous  impulsions.  These,  as  we  have  seen  under 
the  head  of  Feeling,  are  esoteric  in  their  origin :  we  now  go 
on  to  consider  that  exoteric  class  belonging  to  the  higher  stage 
of  development  called  Rational,  Esthetic,  and  Moral  Truths. 

The  process  here  is  just  the  reverse  of  that  we  have  been 
considering.  In  sensuous  feeling,  impulses  blindly  propel,  and 
the  sensations  are  themselves  immediate  objects  of  cognition ; 
they  must  acquire  an  intellectual  factor  before  these  can  be  sub- 
ject to  volition,  and  then  the  action  is  directory  or  repressive. 
But  material  of  thought  coming  from  without,  does  not  present 
itself  to  consciousness  in  its  sensuous  aspect,  but  as  an  intellec- 
tion. There  is  thus  primarily  nothing  to  restrain,  because  there 
is  nothing  propulsive.  It  is  not  until  after  the  meaning  dis- 
closed is  transferred  to  feeling,  and  given  value,  that  emotion 
discovers  itself,  and  government  becomes  necessary.  But  pass- 
ing the  conative  activity  necessary  in  order  to  make  perception 
clear  and  definite,  there  is  very  definite  and  positive  work  for 
the  will  to  do  in  directing  and  holding  the  organism  upon  the 
subject  to  be  studied,  either  in  a  rational,  esthetic,  or  moral 
aspect ;  though  of  course  the  case  will  differ  through  many 
degrees  for  different  organisms.  In  this  higher  stage,  the 
instrumentality  is  the  same  ;  but  the  work  of  the  will  becomes 
essentially  positive.  It  is  no  longer  inhibitory  and  regulative, 
but  impelling  and  upbuilding.  Little  by  little,  the  meaning  of 
things  disclosed  to  the  understanding  as  true,  or  beautiful,  or 
good,  is,  by  the  active  agency  of  the  will,  transferred  to  the 
emotive  mode ;  and  thus  if  the  work  is  well  done,  there  are 
built  up,  on  the  mechanical  side,  new  and  high  desires,  —  the 
whole  emotive  nature  becoming  refined,  enlarged,  and  purified. 

Now  the  self,  from  the  aspect  of  its  manifoldness,  is  the  scene 
of  constant  strife,  —  impulses  conflict,  desires  conflict,  —  and 


THE    WILL.  235 

one  is  torn  by  contending  factions.  Order  can  only  be  main- 
tained by  the  dominating  agency  of  the  will ;  and,  under 
ordinary  circumstances,  peace  obtains ;  but  sometimes,  under 
unexpected  and  trying  circumstances,  the  will  is  vacillating 
and  unsteady,  and  the  whole  self  in  a  state  of  confusion  and 
uncertainty.  Few  persons  but  at  times  suffer  such  a  stampede ; 
but  some  are  so  habitually  changeable  and  unsteady  that  they 
have  no  confidence  in  themselves,  and  cannot  be  depended  on 
by  others.  This  is  because  they  are  constantly  throwing  the 
conative  organism  in  and  out  of  gear ;  or,  in  consequence  of  a 
confusion  of  the  understanding,  are  in  perplexity  as  to  what 
connection  should  be  established  and  maintained.  Thus  the 
understanding  is  ever  presenting  different  courses  as  possible 
and  promising,  and  feeling  is  clamoring  for  the  gratification 
which  lies  in  certain  directions,  while  prudence  gives  warning 
of  the  danger  or  loss  which  impends  :  the  self  must  decide  — 
must  choose  between  the  two  or  more  possible  courses  of 
action  :  and  the  will  is  the  instrument  of  the  choice. 

As  a  simple  fact  of  consciousness,  the  self  experiences  no 
possible  compulsion  upon  it  to  choose  any  one  out  of  the  many 
courses  of  action  presented ;  and  it  is  in  this  fact,  and  only  at 
this  point,  that  freedom  can  be  predicated.  Determinism  is 
also  a  fact  known  only  primarily  in  consciousness,  and  abso- 
lutely necessary  to  the  notion  of  freedom ;  but  determinism  is 
felt  to  be  in  the  mechanism  alone,  and  after  the  will  has  acted. 
If  the  organism  were  not  compelled  to  body  forth  the  fiats  of 
the  will,  it  would  be  inconceivable  that  any  effects  should  follow 
a  cause ;  and  so,  that  any  such  phenomenon  as  volition  could 
ever  be.  Thus  we  arrive  once  more  at  what  we  have  had 
abundant  reason  to  see  before,  the  personal  and  conscious 
origin  of  cause,  and  the  dependent  uniformity  and  inflexibility 
of  mechanism. 

The  self  must  ever  be  at  its  post,  so  to  speak,  to  give  direc- 
tion to  the  mechanism,  much  as  a  driver  must  make  his  touch 


236  MECHANISM   AND   PERSONALITY. 

on  the  reins  felt,  though  hardly  conscious  at  most  times  of  the 
effort.  In  the  far  larger  round  of  routine  life,  desires  run  so 
evenly  with  the  purposive  trend  of  the  self,  that  the  mechanism 
seems  to  act  of  itself, — and,  indeed,  it  is  the  objective  self 
acting ;  for  those  settled  desires  with  respect  to  business, 
society,  study,  and  whatever  else  that  gives  tone  and  intensity 
to  our  daily  walk,  have  all  been  built  up  by  innumerable  con- 
scious efforts  of  the  will  in  the  past ;  and  now,  by  their  stored- 
up  energy,  are  carrying  the  personality  forward,  through  these 
self-developed  powers.  But  there  is  always  considerably  more 
of  the  original  and  self-directing  factor,  even  in  our  routine  life, 
than  appears ;  much  as  with  the  driver,  though  he  appear  to 
exercise  so  little  control  over  his  horses,  if  he  were  to  let  go 
the  reins  for  a  moment,  the  results  would  ordinarily  show  a 
marked  difference  in  consequence. 

The  functions  of  the  will  are  scarcely  less  important  in  the 
work  of  moulding  and  cultivating  the  intellect.  It  is  the  prov- 
ince of  the  understanding  to  disclose  the  order  and  bearing  of 
things  and  events,  and  this  it  does  according  to  its  excellence 
at  any  particular  moment ;  but  it  is  a  psychical  mechanism,  and 
as  such  is  not  only  susceptible  of  large  variation  in  accuracy 
and  power,  at  every  stage,  but  needs  to  be  developed  from  the 
beginning.  The  office  of  the  will  in  fixing  and  directing  atten- 
tion from  the  beginning  of  the  thought-process  is  of  the  highest 
moment ;  and  without  it  there  could  never  be  anything  more 
than  a  chaotic  thought-mechanism.  Assuming  a  fair  develop- 
ment of  intellectual  power  to  have  been  already  accomplished, 
so  long  as  our  thinking  proceeds  along  accustomed  lines,  and 
on  accustomed  subjects,  the  will  has  little  more  to  do  than  it 
has  in  its  ordinary  government  of  the  vasco-motor  system ;  but 
whenever  an  intellectual  difficulty  arises,  or  where  the  subject 
does  not  call  into  activity  the  stored-up  energy  of  ready-formed 
desires,  the  self  is  compelled  to  hold  the  mind  hard  upon  the 
point  in  hand,  and  stoutly  refuse  to  yield  to  the  weariness  or 


THE   WILL.  237 

indifference  which  is  sure  to  ensue.  If  the  self  keeps  the 
intellect  steadily  applied,  as  a  rule,  difficulties  begin  to  yield, 
and  indifference  gives  way.  There  are  undoubtedly  great  dif- 
ferences in  the  native  powers  of  the  intellect;  but  the  high 
things  accomplished  in  the  thought-world  are  far  more  due  to 
the  persistence  with  which  the  self  uses  its  intellectual  capabil- 
ities than  to  their  original  vigor.  Sir  Isaac  Newton  used  to 
declare  that  he  succeeded  in  his  work,  not  by  any  extraordi- 
nary sagacity,  but  solely  by  patient  and  persistent  thought : 
"  He  kept  the  subject  of  consideration  constantly  before  him, 
and  waited  till  the  first  dawning  opened  gradually  into  a  full 
and  clear  light,  never  quitting,  if  possible,  the  mental  process 
until  the  object  of  it  were  wholly  gained." 

We  may  be  permitted  to  doubt,  in  his  case,  that  this  was  all ; 
but  the  result  of  this  process,  if  not  carried  to  such  an  extreme 
as  to  work  injury  in  other  respects,  is  not  only  that  the  subject 
of  thought  becomes  luminous,  but  an  intellectual  momentum  is 
stored  up  in  the  thought- mechanism  itself,  which  enables  it  to 
do  easily  what  is,  at  first,  wearisome  and  difficult.  This  is  the 
true  work  of  the  student,  that  is  to  say,  of  one  whose  object  is 
the  development  of  his  intellectual  capabilities  for  subsequent 
work  in  special  lines  of  investigation,  or  for  the  general  work  of 
life.  The  materials  of  thought  —  the  actual  information  and 
learning  gathered  by  the  way  —  are  necessary  to  the  process; 
but,  after  all,  cannot  be  compared  for  value  with  the  acquire- 
ment of  mobility,  accuracy,  and  intensity  in  the  thought-mech- 
anism itself.  If,  on  the  other  hand,  the  self  fail  to  use  this 
marvellous  will-power  in  a  true  process  of  intellectual  evolution, 
difficulties  gather  rapidly  from  the  very  neglect  or  misuse, 
which  finally  defeat  better  efforts  made  too  late.  Rust,  ob- 
structive accretions,  and  undertows  of  habit,  clog  and  impede 
any  serious  effort  of  the  self  to  direct  the  current  of  thought 
from  old  channels,  and  to  hold  it  long  enough  in  the  new 
direction  to  wear  its  way  along  higher  lines. 


238  MECHANISM   AND    PERSONALITY. 

But  not  only  has  the  self  this  power  of  refining  and  strength- 
ening the  intellectual  mechanism  through  the  right  use  of  the 
will,  but  it  has  the  power  also  of  developing  and  strengthening 
the  will  itself.  The  process  is  this  :  the  understanding  makes 
one  conscious  that  one  is  too  soft  and  yielding  to  the  pressure 
of  desires,  to  solicitations  from  companions,  and  to  difficulties 
in  the  way  of  study ;  the  feeling  gives  value  to  the  disclosures 
of  the  intellect,  and  one  resolves  (an  act  of  will)  to  be  more 
firm  in  future.  A  new  occasion  presenting  itself,  one  is  but 
partially  successful,  but  renews  the  purpose ;  a  little  better 
success  the  next  time,  and  so  on  to  decided  success.  If  one 
knows  oneself  to  be  vacillating  and  unsteady  in  affairs,  one 
can  practise  decision  in  small  matters,  and  firmness  in  adher- 
ing to  determinations,  though  at  some  cost  or  annoyance,  and 
if  honestly  conducted,  the  will  can  be  trained  as  certainly  as 
the  intellect  and  feeling.  Self-discipline,  in  all  the  modes  of 
the  self,  is  of  the  utmost  importance  ;  and  it  seems  a  pity  that 
young  people  do  not  understand  better  the  psychological  prin- 
ciples underlying  it. 

A  man's  acquisitions  in  this  world  fall  into  two  great  and 
vastly  different  classes,  —  those  which  come  to  be  his  sub- 
jectively and  organically,  and  those  which  come  to  be  his 
objectively  and  artificially.  Thus  the  strength  of  muscle,  the 
sagacity  of  mind,  the  decision  and  honesty  of  character,  all 
belong  to  the  personality,  as  organically  real  and  living  factors, 
—  they  are  the  self  manifested.  All  acquisitions  of  this  class 
can  be  gained  only  by  the  co-operation  of  the  self,  through  the 
will. 

The  acquisitions  belonging  to  the  second  class  are  those 
which  come  to  one  from  without,  and  have  no  vital  and 
organic  ligament  connecting  them  with  the  personality.  They 
are  such  as  wealth,  station,  honors,  friends,  and  whatever  else 
one  may  claim,  in  a  proprietary  sense,  of  the  eternal  world. 
These  may  be  bestowed,  purchased,  seized;  but  the  nexus 


THE    WILL.  239 

between  them  and  the  self  is  never  more  than  a  fiction,  and 
they  may  be  totally  lost  at  any  moment.  The  difference  be- 
tween the  two  classes  is  like  that  between  fruit  actually  growing 
upon  a  tree,  and  the  tied-on  fruit  one  sees  at  Christmastide  for 
the  children.  Now,  this  real  and  true  fruit  of  mind  and  heart 
and  will  can  be  had  in  no  way  but  by  and  through  self- effort ; 
and  the  supreme,  and  dominating  factor,  through  it  all,  is  the 
will.  No  money,  nor  influence,  nor  favor  ever  yet  gave  one 
the  power  to  read  or  write,  to  play  upon  an  instrument,  or 
solve  a  problem  in  mathematics.  Money  and  favor  can,  in- 
deed, supply  the  opportunities  ;  but  no  muscle  will  ever  do  its 
office,  no  brain-cell  will  ever  exercise  its  cunning,  except  by 
the  will  of  the  one  only  person  who  shall  be  able  to  actually 
enjoy  the  gain.  And  so,  in  all  those  higher  reaches  of  self- 
development.  The  only  real  value  of  all  that  second  class, 
for  the  poor,  artificial  possession  of  which  there  is  so  much 
zeal  and  strife  in  the  world,  lies  in  its  bearing  upon,  and  use 
towards  the  acquisition  of  the  true  possessions  which  come  to 
us  through  the  self-developing  realities  of  the  subjective  class. 

The  most  important  relation  of  the  will  to  human  destiny 
still  remains  to  be  mentioned.  It  is  its  moral  aspect.  All 
philosophers  are  agreed  that  there  is  an  important  difference 
between  conduct  which  we  call  prudent,  agreeable,  or  sagacious, 
and  conduct  which  is  morally  good.  The  difference  practi- 
cally between  an  action  which  involves  the  question  of  right 
and  wrong,  and  one  which  is  simply  prudent  or  foolish,  is 
understood  by  everybody,  and  needs  little  explanation  from 
the  every-day  point  of  view.  Theoretically  it  is  an  ethical 
question,  and  I  shall  defer  this  aspect  for  consideration  at  a 
later  stage  of  our  inquiry.  Here  we  confine  our  treatment  of 
it  to  a  brief  look  at  its  psychological  bearing. 

Obviously  the  will  is  an  essential  factor  of  all  questions  of 
conduct,  either  prudent  or  moral.  But  in  every  act,  we  may 
distinguish  three  stages ;  the  conscious  promptings  of  the 


24O  MECHANISM    AND    PERSONALITY. 

emotional  nature  under  the  disclosures  of  the  intellect,  the 
purposive  self-determination,  and  the  results  which  follow  this 
purposive  epoch.  Of  these,  there  is  no  liberty  in  either  the 
first  or  the  last.  The  emotional  nature  must  make  itself  known 
in  consciousness  for  just  what  it  is  under  the  existing  state 
of  the  case ;  and  after  the  self  has  culminated  in  a  volitive  fiat, 
the  vasco- motor  mechanism  must  execute  the  mandate  with 
the  same  absolute  necessity  as  one  cog-wheel  compels  the 
movement  of  another.  It  is  inconceivable,  therefore,  that  the 
self  should  hold  itself  accountable  for  the  solicitations  which 
assail  it  under  an  existing  environment,  though  conscious  of 
the  fact  that  it  has  had  much  to  do  with  building  up,  in  the 
past,  what  are  now  facts  of  its  own  nature.  So  also,  after 
the  purposive  epoch,  the  results,  falling  under  the  law  of 
determinism  in  nature,  no  sense  of  accountability  in  them,  as 
such,  can  be  recognized  by  the  self.  But  consciousness  has 
quite  another  voice  with  respect  to  the  purposive  epoch. 
However  strongly  the  self  may  know  itself  to  be  impelled  to  a 
particular  volition,  consciousness  is  clear  that  the  decision 
rests  with  the  self  alone ;  and  a  corresponding  sense  of  ac- 
countability is  recognized.  It  is  therefore  the  purpose  alone 
which  can  give  self  accountability  to  an  action.  If  the  purpose 
be  good,  the  act  is  good  ;  if  consciousness  recognizes  the  pur- 
pose to  be  bad,  the  act  is  bad.  We  do  not  now  inquire  what 
the  ground  for  this  recognition  of  moral  quality  in  purpose  is  : 
we  here  confine  ourselves  to  the  bare  fact  that  there  is  such 
recognition.  As  to  whether  the  purpose  with  which  the  will 
acts  is  or  is  not  good,  the  self  is  the  supreme  and  only  judge ; 
and  it,  and  it  alone,  can  know  whether,  in  the  light  of  the 
understanding  at  the  moment,  any  particular  purpose  has 
this  moral  quality  or  not. 

In  many,  indeed  most,  actions  this  moral  quality  does  not 
appear  at  all,  and  the  reason  of  this  fact  will  appear  when  we 
come  to  this  inquiry.  Such  actions  fall  under  the  general  head 


THE    WILL.  241 

of  prudence,  taking  the  word  in  its  largest  sense.  Such  actions 
may  be  either  those  which  are  intended  to  promote  general  well- 
being,  by  the  accumulation  of  power  in  the  shape  of  wealth,  or 
education,  for  future  use ;  or  those  which  give  immediate  pleas- 
ure, and  have  no  further  end.  The  success  or  failure  of  one's 
purpose  to  accomplish  the  object,  with  all  dependent  conse- 
quences, will  determine  whether  the  particular  act  is  wise  or 
not.  Thus  it  is  that-  a  prudent,  or  an  imprudent,  action  de- 
pends upon  what  happens  after  the  purposive  epoch ;  and  this 
fact  broadly  marks  a  distinction  from  all  moral  action  :  —  pru- 
dence being  justified  by  the  mechanical  results  after  the  act  of 
volition ;  morality,  by  the  quality  of  the  purpose  itself.  Bad 
results  make  known  the  unwisdom  of  the  acts,  and  one  may  be 
sorry  that  one  did  not  act  differently :  a  good  act  may  also  re- 
sult unfortunately,  but  one  cannot  feel  guilty,  however  much  he 
may  deplore  the  event,  or  where,  under  a  mistake,  he  had  not 
understood  the  case  better.  Once  assured  of  the  right  pur- 
pose of  an  act,  in  any  state  of  case,  one  cannot  be  sorry  he 
had  not  acted  differently,  unless  he  regret  that  he  was  true  to 
his  own  consciousness  of  right.  There  can  never  be  penitence, 
unless  there  is  a  clear  conviction  that  the  act  had  a  guilty  pur- 
pose, however  much  one  may  bewail  the  result.  Here  we  leave 
the  question  for  the  present. 


242  MECHANISM    AND    PERSONALITY. 


CHAPTER   XXIII. 

UNITY   OF    PERSONALITY. 

Difficulties  of  question.  Unity  and  manifoldness.  Unity  a  primordial 
condition.  Inferior  organisms.  Protozoa.  Not  two  worlds,  one  spiritual 
and  the  other  physical.  Man  a  manifestation  of  one  person  in  two  hypos- 
tases.  The  psychical  and  mechanical  inseparable.  Gross  and  sublimated 
matter.  Visible  and  invisible  universe.  The  '  Unseen  Universe  '  quoted. 
The  mechanical  mode  has  its  title  to  reality  only  through  Personality.  The 
cicada. 

ONE  has  no  difficulty  in  understanding  the  Unity  of  Per- 
sonality, so  long  as  one  is  content  to  know  it  for  and 
in  oneself;  nor  is  there  any  difficulty  in  recognizing  it  in 
another.  But  in  attempting  to  say,  explicitly,  just  what  it  is 
that  one  means  by  this  unity,  a  serious  trouble  starts  up,  and 
continues  to  confront  us.  This  will  not  be  a  surprise,  however, 
if  we  keep  in  mind  what  has  been  so  constantly  insisted  upon 
in  these  pages,  namely,  that  the  ultimate  is  known,  not  by  the 
construing  power,  but  by  the  power  that  underlies  all  relations, 
—  the  power  through  which  we  derive  all  rational  intuitions, 
and  which  is  rather  pure  feeling  than  articulate  thought.  The 
understanding,  concerning  itself  with  the  differentia  of  con- 
cepts, pronouncing  upon  the  likeness  and  difference  among 
the  divers  marks  of  an  object  of  thought,  has  no  difficulty  in 
dealing  with  personality  so  long  as  it  is  permitted  to  seize  upon 
and  emphasize  its  modes,  states,  and  conditions.  These  all, 
as  elements  of  the  empirical  ego,  take  their  place  in  the  self's 
world,  —  the  sole  and  only  world  that  is,  or  can  be,  known  to 
any  one  of  us :  —  but  when  all  marks  are  denied  it,  the  con- 
struing power  —  the  power  which  demands  subject  and  predi- 


UNITY    OF    PERSONALITY.  243 

cate,  and  pronounces  upon  their  congruence  or  incongmence 

—  has  no  field  in  which  to  exercise  its  functions ;  so  that,  in 
the  sphere  of  the  understanding,  this  aspect  of  *  knowing '  is 
impossible.     The  self  acting,  the  self  suffering,  the  self  in  exhi- 
bition  of  any  phenomenon,   presents    material   for   cognitive 
scrutiny,  and  the  understanding  is  at  home  in  the  execution  of 
its  office.     But  it  is  obvious  that  the  necessary  conditions  of  all 
such  activities  is  plurality ;  and,  therefore,  whatever  the  under- 
standing can  discover  of  the  self  must  carry  with  it  this  under- 
lying condition  of  manifoldness.    For  this  reason,  it  is  hopeless, 
and  the  effort  involves  contradiction,  to  look  for  the  unity  of 
the  self  in  any  deliverance  of  the  understanding. 

And  yet  every  such  deliverance  implies  that  very  unity  which 
it  is  incompetent  to  construe.  In  any  judgment  touching  two 
concepts,  A  and  B,  the  full  statement  undoubtedly  is,  I  see,  — 
I  declare,  —  I  know  A  to  be  like  or  unlike  B.  In  any  sense- 
perception,  the  discovery  of  order  and  arrangement,  of  beauty 
and  power,  the  consciousness  rendered  explicit  is,  I  see,  I 
discover,  I  feel.  The  self,  thus,  is  always  presupposed  as 
the  centre  of  the  in-and-out-go  of  whatever  affects  it,  or  is 
affected  by  it.  This  is  so  obvious,  in  view  of  what  has  been 
said  already,  that  it  needs  no  further  amplification  here.  We 
are  simply  back  once  more  to  the  domain  of  the  Pure  Reason, 

—  the  source   and  ground  of  all  knowing.     To  be  explicit, 
the   point  is  this  :  —  the  understanding   tells  us  plainly   that 
we  cannot   understand  the   unity  of  the   self,   nor  the  unity 
of  anything  whatever,  apart  from  its  plurality ;  but  '  to  under- 
stand,' it  must  be  borne  in  mind,  is  to  be  taken  in  its  technical 
sense  ;  and  by  no  means  as  synonymous  with  '  to  know.'     We 
do  know,  and  must  know,  the  self  in  its  unity  as  a  primordial 
condition  of  all  other  knowing  of  whatever  kind  soever. 

This  brings  the  fundamental  truth,  and  key-note  of  this  work, 
once  more  clearly  before  us  :  —  the  co- existence  of  the  '  one 
and  the  many.'  The  title  of  the  book  is  but  another  way  of 


244  MECHANISM    AND    PERSONALITY. 

phrasing  this  mystery  of  the  ages.  Personality  as  the  subject 
knowing,  feeling,  acting,  is  essentially  One ;  the  modes  of  the 
personality  as  known  in  cognition,  feeling,  and  volition,  are 
essentially  manifold.  The  knowing  instrumentality,  the  feeling 
instrumentality,  the  acting  instrumentality,  are,  in  their  sever- 
alty,  mechanisms ;  and  each  in  itself  is  a  plurality.  The  self, 
as  subject,  has  a  proprietary  right  to  its  modes,  and  they  must 
look  to  it  for  their  reality ;  and  so  the  entire  mechanism,  in  its 
physical  and  psychical  aspects,  belongs  to  the  personality  in  its 
unity.  We  say  '  my  thought,'  '  my  feeling,'  '  my  will ' ;  and  we 
never  for  a  moment  mistake  any  one  of  them,  or  all  of  them 
together,  for  the  self.  They  are  the  manifestations  of  the  self, 
as  much  to  the  self  as  to  others.  Thus,  while  they  are  not  non- 
self,  they  can  have  no  possible  title  to  be  at  all,  except  in  and 
of  the  self ;  and  so  cannot  be  thought  of  as  separate,  or  separa- 
ble from  the  self.  Neither,  on  the  other  hand,  can  the  self  be 
thought  of  as  separate,  and  apart  from  its  modes,  —  those  now 
known  in  consciousness,  or  others  which  may  replace  them. 
This,  as  the  metaphysical  problem  of  substance  and  quality,  we 
shall  have  to  speak  of  further  on. 

All  this  applies  to  the  whole  bodily  organism.  The  body  is 
not  the  self,  but  it  is  its  physical  manifestation,  absolutely  nec- 
essary to  it ;  and  so,  inseparable  from  it.  But  when  we  speak 
of  the  body,  we  do  not  mean  an  individuality  incapable  of 
numerical  distinction  and  separation,  but  we  mean  a  plurality 
made  up  of  divers  parts,  all  undergoing  constant  change.  The 
body  is  not  the  same  in  its  physical  composition  at  any  two 
consecutive  moments.  The  body,  necessary  to  any  thought  of 
the  self,  is  thus  not  an  identity,  —  not  this  now-existing  body 
as  it  is  in  every  particular,  —  but  a  body  is  necessary,  in  which 
the  modes  of  the  self  shall  continuously  find  their  mechanical 
basis.  Thus  the  body  may  lose  a  limb,  any  amount  of  tissue, 
even  large  masses  of  the  brain ;  but  consciousness  does  not 
tell  us  that  the  self  suffers  mutilation,  or  is  less  itself  than  before. 


UNITY    OF    PERSONALITY.  245 

This  is  because  the  body  is,  in  its  very  nature,  a  plurality,  made 
up  of  parts  and  susceptible  of  objective  increase  and  diminu- 
tion. 

We  have  in  this  fact  a  notable  distinction  between  body,  as 
such,  and  the  personality  in  its  bodily  manifestations.  When  a 
mere  body,  or  thing,  is  increased,  diminished,  or  divided,  our 
thought  is  that  it  is  increased,  diminished,  or  divided ;  but  we 
never  think,  and  cannot  think,  that  the  personality  suffers  accre- 
tions, subtractions,  or  dismemberment  by  any  possible  process 
which  may  be  performed  upon  it  physically  or  psychically.  We 
do  indeed  think  of  it  as  changeable  and  changing ;  but  never  in 
such  wise  as  to  discredit,  or  in  any  possible  way  touch  its 
unity. 

Undoubtedly  '  thing '  may  claim  a  sort  of  unity.  It  is  '  one  ' 
thing,  and  of  this  it  cannot  be  defeated ;  but  it  is  a  unity  that 
at  once  becomes  two  upon  division ;  whereas,  we  cannot  form 
the  least  conception  of  what  could  be  meant  by  the  half,  or  any 
fractional  part  of  self.  This  is  true  also  of  anything  having 
sub-human  personality,  as  a  brute ;  or  of  whatever  has  an 
animate  existence  at  all,  as  a  vegetable.  We  are  compelled  to 
recognize  a  vital  oneness  which  is  not  susceptible  of  fraction. 

Science,  it  is  true,  acquaints  us  with  innumerable  examples 
of  organisms  in  which  it  cannot  be  denied  that  there  is  a  one- 
ness of  vital  structure,  and  yet,  upon  a  section  being  made,  the 
dismembered  part  readily  acquires  an  independent  organic  exist- 
ence possessing  all  the  characteristics  of  the  parent  organism. 
"  The  severed  parts  of  the  mutilated  polype  become  wholes  by 
growing  into  perfect  animal  forms,  in  each  of  which  is  fully 
evolved  the  sum  of  psychic  capacities  that  belong  to  the  origi- 
nal uninjured  creature."  Morphologists  are  agreed  that  the 
protozoa  exhibit  endless  examples  of  composite  life, — states 
of  existence  in  which  a  paramount  individuality  is  exhibited, 
and  yet  which  are  composed  of  innumerable  sub-individual- 
ities ;  even  rising  through  several  orders  of  integration,  and 


246  MECHANISM    AND    PERSONALITY. 

composing  individualities  of  greater  and  greater  complexity; 
as  in  the  sponges  and  the  hydra.  In  many  animal  and  vege- 
table species,  propagation  is  accomplished  by  the  spontaneous 
severance  of  portions  of  the  parent  body ;  such  portions  devel- 
oping into  the  perfect  organism  of  the  species.  Substantially 
the  same  phenomenon  shows  itself  even  in  human  generation. 

Obviously  it  is  impossible  for  either  naturalist  or  psychol- 
ogist ever  to  know  more  of  the  nature  of  this  unity  in  complex- 
ity than  appears  in  its  extrinsic  phenomena ;  and  it  is  safe  to 
assume  that  there  will  always  remain  a  wide  domain  of  conjec- 
ture in  any  attempt  to  explain  the  organic  nexus.  It  appears 
plain,  however,  that  when  an  artificial  severance  is  made  in  such 
an  individualized  community,  it  is  not  a  matter  of  complete  in- 
difference where  the  section  shall  take  place  (so  long,  at  least, 
as  we  can,  for  minuteness,  distinguish  the  sub-units),  but  that, 
for  the  new  community  life,  or  an  isolated  individual  develop- 
ment, the  severed  part  must  carry  with  it  a  complete  germinal 
unit  of  the  being  to  be  developed.  If  there  be,  indeed,  a  true 
unity  of  the  first,  or  any  other  order  in  such  personse,  the 
several  sub-personalities  but  constitute  the  mechanism  of  the 
paramount  individuality,  and  a  section  would  not  cut  in  two 
the  personality  of  (say)  the  polype,  but  simply  cut  the  corpo- 
real bond  which  holds  one  part  of  its  vitalized  body  to  another ; 
giving  to  the  severed  portion  the  opportunity  to  enter  upon 
an  independent  existence,  and  develop  a  more  perfect  organism 
than  it  could  before  enjoy.  In  point  of  fact,  except  that  we 
do  not  see  the  development  of  independent  creatures,  the 
same  thing  takes  place  upon  the  separation  of  a  portion  of 
living  tissue  from  any  one  of  the  higher  animals,  man  included. 
Physiology  does  not  permit  us  to  doubt  that  our  bodies  are 
aggregations  of  an  infinite  number  of  protoplasmic  units ;  so 
that,  in  reality,  the  morphological  facts  of  the  protozoic  and 
polyzoic  worlds  present  no  greater  difficulties  on  this  point 
than  are  found  in  the  human  organism.  We  but  find  our- 


UNITY   OF   PERSONALITY.  247 

selves  struggling  with  dissonances  which,  without  yielding  up 
their  antagonism,  are  welded  into  a  broader  and  deeper  har- 
mony ;  or  with  individual  motions,  as  of  the  earth,  free  and  in- 
dependent in  their  several  spheres,  composed  of  all  velocities 
in  all  directions,  swallowed  up  and  lost  in  the  larger  sweep  of 
her  paramount  orbital  individuality. 

But,  whatsoever  the  external  world  reveals  to  us,  we  must 
ever  remind  ourselves  that  it  can  never  acquire  any  better 
warrant  for  its  reality  than  is  given  in  consciousness ;  and  to 
this  at  last  we  must  fall  back  —  as  from  it,  at  first,  we  were 
compelled  to  set  out  —  in  any  discussion  of  the  unity  of  per- 
sonality. But  here  some  caution  is  needed.  It  is  not  because 
we  appear  to  ourselves  in  consciousness  to  be  one,  that  we 
get  our  guarantee  that  we  are  actually  one;  for,  manifestly, 
many  things  appear,  and  persistently  appear,  to  us  which  we 
know  to  be  semblances ;  but,  as  Lotze  says :  "  Our  belief  in 
our  personal  unity  rests  not  on  our  appearing  to  ourselves  such 
a  unity,  but  on  our  being  able  to  appear  to  ourselves  at  all. 
Did  we  appear  to  ourselves  something  quite  different,  nay, 
did  we  seem  to  ourselves  to  be  an  unconnected  plurality,  we 
would  from  this  very  fact,  from  the  bare  possibility  of  appear- 
ing anything  to  ourselves,  deduce  the  necessary  unit  of  our 
being,  this  time  in  open  contradiction  with  what  self-observa- 
tion sets  before  us  as  our  own  image.  What  a  being  appears 
to  itself  to  be  is  not  the  important  point ;  if  it  can  appear 
anyhow  to  itself,  or  other  thing  to  it,  it  must  be  capable  of 
unifying  manifold  phenomena  in  an  absolute  individuality  of  its 
nature." 

Insisting,  then,  upon  the  unity  of  the  human  personality 
discovered  to  us  as  a  primordial  intuition,  and  supported  at 
all  points  by  the  necessities  of  thought,  we  are  compelled  to 
recognize  the  self  as  that  in  which  and  for  which  all  its  modes 
are  entitled  to  reality,  in  any  ultimate  sense.  It  is  thus  itself 
the  primordial  reality,  and  is  not  to  be  thought  of  as  an 


248  MECHANISM   AND    PERSONALITY. 

abstraction,  a  somewhat  vague  and  shadowy,  which  may  be  set 
loose  from  its  modes,  and  still  exist  destitute  of  quality  or  rela- 
tion, out  of  space-  and  time-forms,  as,  indeed,  pure  and  simple 
existence,  which  is  pure  and  simple  nothing.  Some  such  vague 
notion  has  been,  and  still  is,  the  popular  teaching  on  this 
point,  —  the  legitimate  and  necessary  outcome  of  that  dualistic 
theory,  reaching,  in  modern  times,  back  to  Descartes,  in  which 
mind  and  matter  are  held  to  have  no  possible  touch,  or  point 
in  common,  —  to  belong  indeed  to  two  substantially  different 
worlds. 

In  our  view,  there  are  not  two  worlds,  one  psychical  and  the 
other  physical,  but  one  world  of  which  these  are  the  two 
modes ;  both  real,  but  with  a  common  ground  deeper  than 
themselves,  the  Ultimate  and  Infinite  '  One,'  —  the  Self- Lim- 
ited, Self-Existent  Personality. 

This  carries  our  thought  back  to  the  analogy  presented  in 
the  lower  forms  of  life,  in  which  we  see  paramount  individu- 
alities gathering  up  into  unity  the  manifold  sub-personalities 
of  their  organisms. 

Man,  the  microcosm,  is  one  self,  manifested  and  realized  in 
his  two  hypostases,  one  a  physical  mechanism,  and  the  other  a 
psychical  instrumentality.  He  is  thus  not  a  mere  physical  being, 
nor  a  mere  psychical  being ;  but  a  physio-psychical  being,  —  a 
person,  gathering  up  into  himself  the  innumerable  limited  self- 
activities  of  his  bodily  organism,  himself  a  limited  self  and  a 
self-limiting  reality. 

According  to  our  view,  it  is  a  mistake  to  hold  that  the  soul, 
or  mind,  or  spirit  (whichever  one  of  these  may  be  preferred 
as  the  name  of  the  psychical  mode  of  personality)  can  possess 
an  independent  and  separate  existence,  any  more  than  the 
physical  mechanism  could  possess  a  unity  apart  from  the  self. 
The  empirical  self  implies,  atfd  absolutely  demands,  the  psy- 
chical factor ;  and  this  would  be  lost  by  the  destruction  of  the 
physical  basis ;  and  so,  also,  any  activity  or  energy  of  the  self 


UNITY    OF    PERSONALITY.  249 

demands  that  it  shall  have  modes  by  which  psychical  differentia- 
tions shall  take  place,  and  these  modes  cannot,  therefore,  be 
detached  from  the  self,  nor  the  self  from  them. 

Unless,  then,  we  mean  by  '  soul,'  or  any  other  like  word,  to 
embrace  the  entire  personality  in  its  essential  physical  and  psy- 
chical oneness,  it  is  misleading  and  inadmissible ;  such  words 
can  be  used  in  any  other  sense  to  designate,  not  the  self,  but 
some  mere  mode  thereof.  We  say  '  my  soul,'  '  my  mind,'  '  my 
spirit,'  etc.  In  this  sense,  the  use  is  correct  and  clear  enough ; 
but  any  meaning  which  implies  a  possible  diremption  of  the 
personality  is  erroneous  and  unjustifiable. 

But,  it  will  be  asked,  if  both  the  substantial  and  mental 
modes  are  absolutely  necessary  to  the  integrity  of  the  self, 
what  becomes  of  personality  at  death  ?  The  question  is  perti- 
nent and  demands  an  answer,  though  it  might  be  better  in 
some  respects  to  defer  it  until  after  we  have  seen  what  light 
advanced  science  is  able  to  throw  on  the  subject  of  the  essen- 
tial nature  of  matter.  It  is  necessary  to  so  far  anticipate  the 
results  of  the  discussion  of  that  subject  as  to  say  that  our  ordi- 
nary conception  of  gross  matter,  as  a  somewhat  hard,  impene- 
trable, or  visible,  is  the  result  of  an  invincible  prejudice.  We 
shall  see  that  there  are  many  forms  of  substance  which  offer  no 
sensible  resistance,  are  not  visible,  nor  in  any  wise  discoverable 
to  our  present  senses ;  some,  familiarly  known  to  us,  as,  for 
example,  water,  which  are  solid,  liquid,  or  gaseous  under  differ- 
ent conditions;  while  with  that  inter-stellar  ether  which  per- 
vades all  space  there  is  no  semblance  of  sensible  qualities  left, 
not  to  speak  of  the  possible  '  perfect  fluid '  of  the  advanced 
physicists.  There  is  then  nothing  in  physical  science  against, 
and  much  that  absolutely  demands,  the  hypothesis  that  all  mat- 
ter in  its  ultimate  analysis  is  super-sensible  and  invisible ;  so 
that  we  are  not  only  permitted,  but  required,  to  hold  that  the 
gross  matter  of  our  bodies  is  but  one  out  of  any  number  of  pos- 
sible forms  which  it  may  assume  under  different  circumstances. 


25O  MECHANISM    AND    PERSONALITY. 

The  authors  of  the  "  Unseen  Universe,"  themselves  leaders  cf 
scientific  thought,  say  they  are  led  to  conclude  that  "  the  visi- 
ble system  is  not  the  whole  universe,  but  only,  it  may  be,  a 
very  small  part  of  it ;  and  that  there  must  be  an  invisible  order 
of  things  which  will  remain  and  possess  energy  when  the  pres- 
ent system  has  passed  away.  Furthermore,  we  have  seen  that 
an  argument  derived  from  the  beginning,  rather  than  the  end 
of  things,  assures  us  that  the  invisible  universe  existed  before 
the  visible  one.  From  this  we  conclude  that  the  invisible  uni- 
verse exists  now,  and  this  conclusion  will  be  strengthened  when 
we  come  to  discuss  the  nature  of  the  invisible  universe,  and  to 
see  that  it  cannot  possibly  have  been  changed  into  the  present, 
but  must  exist  independently  now.  It  is,  moreover,  very  closely 
connected  with  the  present  system,  inasmuch  as  this  may  be 
looked  upon  as  having  come  into  being  through  its  means. 
Thus  we  are  led  to  believe  that  there  exists  now  an  invisible 
order  of  things,  intimately  connected  with  the  present,  and 
capable  of  acting  energetically  upon  it,  —  for,  in  truth,  the 
energy  of  the  present  system  is  to  be  looked  upon  as  origi- 
nally derived  from  the  invisible." 

Upon  the  subject  immediately  under  consideration  they  go 
on  to  say  :  "  Let  us  begin  by  supposing  that  we  possess  a  frame, 
or  the  rudiments  of  a  frame,  connecting  us  with  the  invisible 
universe,  which  we  may  call  the  spiritual  body. 

"  Now  each  thought  that  we  think  is  accompanied  by  certain 
molecular  motions  and  displacements  of  the  brain,  and  part  of 
these,  let  us  allow,  are  in  some  way  stored  up  in  that  organ,  so 
as  to  produce  what  may  be  termed  our  material  or  physical 
memory.  Other  parts  of  these  motions  are,  however,  com- 
municated to  the  spiritual  or  invisible  body,  and  are  there  stored 
up,  forming  a  memory  which  may  be  made  use  of  when  that 
body  is  free  to  exercise  its  functions. 

"  Again,  one  of  the  arguments  which  proves  the  evidence  of 
the  invisible  universe  demands  that  it  shall  be  full  of  energy 


UNITY    OF    PERSONALITY.  25! 

when  the  present  universe  is  defunct.  We  can  therefore  very 
well  imagine  that  after  death,  when  the  spiritual  body  is  free  to 
exercise  its  functions,  it  may  be  replete  with  energy,  and  have 
eminently  the  power  of  action  in  the  present,  retaining  also  a 
hold  upon  the  past,  inasmuch  as  the  memory  of  past  events 
has  been  stored  up  in  it,  and  thus  preserving  the  two  essential 
requisites  of  a  continuous  intelligent  existence." 

This  is  sufficient  to  assure  us,  negatively,  that  there  are  no 
scientific  grounds  upon  which  to  conclude  that  the  dissolution 
of  the  gross  and  palpable  body  deprives  the  personality  of  its 
essential  physical  mechanism  ;  but,  on  the  contrary,  that  there 
is  better  reason  to  hold,  positively,  that  the  truer  impalpable 
super-sensible  ' spiritual  body'  still  continues,  and  retains  all 
the  energies  and  potentialities  possessed  by  the  sensible  body0 

But  as  we  have  seen  that  the  mechanical  mode  of  the  self 
has  its  ground  and  only  title  to  reality  in  the  personality,  —  and 
in  this  we  shall  be  still  further  certified  as  we  proceed,  —  we  are 
unable,  in  any  way  we  can  make  articulate  to  ourselves,  to 
conceive  of  its  discontinuity  or  dissolution.  That  we  cannot 
positively  construe  to  ourselves  the  state  or  condition  of  the 
personality  after  death,  must  be  admitted,  but  it  must  be 
remembered  that  such  state  or  condition  would  be  an  actuality, 
and  that  we  are  in  no  worse  case  with  regard  to  this  than  we 
are  with  respect  to  any  other  possible  unexperienced  fact.  We 
cannot  in  advance  of  experience  imagine  even  a  new  flavor, "a 
new  perfume,  a  new  state  or  phenomenon  of  any  sort  whatever, 
even  of  this  present  world,  though  we  are  quite  sure  many  such 
facts  of  experience  will,  in  the  course  of  time,  be  revealed  to 
us.  All  we  can  do  by  the  powers  of  the  imagination,  as  we 
saw  in  discussing  that  psychical  energy,  is  to  combine  and 
arrange,  under  the  laws  of  thought,  the  materials  already  in  our 
possession,  by  experience  ;  but  never  by  any  possibility  can  we 
introduce  any  absolutely  new  element  into  a  fabric  of  fancy. 
Now,  of  a  super-sensible  world  we  have  no  possible  experience, 


252  MECHANISM    AND    PERSONALITY. 

and,  with  our  present  powers  fitted  to  the  needs  of  a  visible 
world,  we  never  can  have  any;  and  thus  shall  never,  in  this 
life,  be  able  to  gather  the  least  material  through  which  to  con- 
strue such  a  post-mortal  existence.  It  follows,  therefore,  that 
we  are,  by  the  necessities  of  the  case,  utterly  incompetent  to 
form  any  conception  of  the  state  or  condition  of  a  super-sensi- 
ble existence ;  and  so  our  failure  in  this  regard  in  no  wise 
makes  against  the  probability  of  such  a  future  state. 

The  case  then  stands  thus :  before  we  could  conclude  that 
the  self — the,  to  us,  one  and  only  absolutely  indisputable 
certainty  —  suffers  or  could  suffer  annihilation,  we  need  to  have 
the  most  overwhelming  evidence ;  whereas  such  evidence  is  in 
no  particular  forthcoming ;  but,  on  the  contrary,  we  have  much 
proof  against  the  hypothesis  and  in  support  of  the  conviction 
among  all  men  and  in  all  ages,  that  the  human  personality  does 
not  terminate  at  death. 

All  nature  is  full  of  exemplifications  of  bodily  transformations. 
One  example  out  of  the  multitude  will  be  sufficient  for  our 
purpose,  and  I  fix  upon  a  species  of  the  cicadse  —  the  '  seven- 
teen-year locust.'  Passing  over  the  twenty-five  or  thirty  bodily 
transformations  which  it  undergoes  during  its  long  larval  exist- 
ence underground,  it  at  last  bores  its  way  to  the  surface,  and 
appears  above  ground,  completely  encased  in  a  hard,  horny 
body,  with  legs,  antennae,  and  all  the  paraphernalia  of  a  creep- 
ing bug.  It  makes  for  the  nearest  tree  and  begins  to  climb, 
but  does  not  get  far  before  an  astonishing  change  takes  place. 
The  shell  splits  down  the  middle  of  the  thorax,  the  mask  (larva) 
is  left  behind,  the  pupa  passes  into  the  perfect  cicada,  emerging 
an  altogether  different  creature  in  function  and  appearance, 
now  with  iridescent  wings,  an  astonishing  instrument  for  the 
production  of  sound,  and  everything  ready  prepared  to  enter 
in  a  moment  upon  a  sphere  of  existence  wholly  new  and  unlike 
any  of  the  many  through  which  it  had  previously  passed.  The 
shell  or  mask,  with  all  its  legs  and  digging  apparatus  perfect, 


UNITY    OF    PERSONALITY.  253 

looking  still  very  like  the  creature  of  which  it  is  now  but  the 
exuvium,  still  clings  to  the  tree,  while  the  real  creature,  in  its 
new  mechanism  and  new  splendor,  spreads  its  wings  in  the 
aerial  world,  and  sets  up  its  ear-splitting  song. 

Now  in  this,  and  in  innumerable  like  larval  changes,  the 
transformation  is,  it  is  true,  from  one  form  of  gross  matter  to 
another;  but  it  is  clearly  unscientific  to  urge  an  objection 
which  turns  upon  a  mere  degree  of  refinement.  Substitute  for 
the  visible  substance  of  the  emerging  pupa  one  of  the  many 
impalpable  and  invisible  forms  of  matter,  and  we  should  have 
some  far-away,  but  doubtless  quite  analogous,  transformation,  to 
the  emergence  of  the  spiritual  body  from  the  '  mask  '  of  the 
sensible,  common  form  of  matter  which  encloses  our  more  per- 
fect bodies,  fitting  them  to  our  present  uses,  while  they  are 
preparing  for  a  higher,  hyper-sensible  existence. 


254  MECHANISM   AND    PERSONALITY. 


CHAPTER  XXIV. 

WHAT   IS    '  THING  '  ?      CONSTRUCTION   OF   MATTER. 

Illusions  of  nature.  What  underlies  phenomena  ?  Pure  Being. 
'  Thing '  that  which  affects  and  is  affected.  The  position  of  Bishop 
Berkeley.  Quoted.  Analytical  physics  and  construction  of  matter.  Bos- 
covich's  theory.  Molecular  Mechanics.  Clerk  Maxwell.  Professor  Tait. 
Sir  William  Thompson's  vortical  atom.  Difficulties.  Le  Sage's  theory. 
Ether.  The  physicists  driven  into  metaphysic.  Atoms  '  manufactured 
articles.' 

NATURE  gives  us  constant  warnings  not  to  accept  appear- 
ances for  more  than  they  are  worth.  Whatever  appears 
is,  in  so  far,  true ;  but  we  are  expected  to  learn  that  there  is 
always  a  deeper  truth  for  the  sake  of  which  the  appearance  is, 
and  for  which,  indeed,  it  must  be.  The  appearance,  though 
not  real  in  its  own  right,  is  not  a  delusion,  but  becomes  one 
when  we  stop  upon  it,  and  insist  on  taking  it  for  an  end  in 
itself.  Thus  illusions,  by  our  own  fault,  constantly  pass  into 
delusions. 

There  is  no  just  ground  to  complain  of  being  deceived  by 
the  appearances  in  the  natural  world,  though  there  is  nothing 
that  would  not  serve  as  an  example  of  how  we  accept  the  seem- 
ing for  the  real.  We  see  the  vault  of  heaven  above  us,  but  we 
know  that  it  is  an  illusion.  The  sun  and  the  moon,  with  the 
myriad  worlds  at  every  possible  difference  of  distance,  and 
moving  at  enormous  velocities  in  every  direction,  are  all  ap- 
parently brought  together  on  this  spherical  surface,  and  worlds 
and  systems  present  themselves  to  us  as  fixed  and  glittering 
points.  If  there  is  one  thing  clear  to  us,  it  is  that  the  earth 
under  our  feet  is  at  rest  and  immovable,  and  yet  its  motions, 


CONSTRUCTION    OF    MATTER.  255 

in  rapidity  and  variety,  rival  the  particles  of  dust  in  the 
fiercest  whirlwind.  We  see  the  celestial  bodies  cross  the  heav- 
ens from  east  to  west,  but  we  know  that  the  movement  is  not 
in  them,  but  in  us.  The  rainbow  hung  in  the  clouds  is  not 
there,  but  on  the  retina  of  the  eye. 

It  is  quite  the  same  in  terrestrial  things.  The  hues  of  the  lily, 
its  perfume,  its  apparent  magnitude,  are  not  in  it,  but  us.  The 
hoot  of  the  owl,  the  warmth  of  the  fire,  the  flavor  of  the  peach, 
are  not  realities  of  the  outer  world,  but  are  only  states  and  con- 
ditions of  our  own  sensibilities.  What  do  we  see  of  the  vibra- 
tions which  are  the  physical  basis  of  sound,  heat,  electricity, 
light,  and  perhaps  all  material  phenomena? 

Then  do  our  senses  deceive  us?  No,  certainly  not.  They 
do  just  what  by  their  office  and  nature  they  are  appointed  to 
do.  As  Lotze  says,  "  Color  and  sound  are  no  worse  because 
they  are  our  sensations." 

But  the  question  presses  itself  upon  us,  What  is  it  that  ap- 
pears ?  What  is  '  thing '  ?  We  do  not  ask  now,  how  we  know 
'thing,'  but,  What  is  it? 

In  the  first  place,  it  cannot  be  any  mere  quality,  nor  the  sum 
of  any  number  of  qualities.  Hardness  cannot  separate  itself 
from  the  'thing'  which  is  hard.  The  weight  of  a  body  changes 
as  it  is  carried  from  the  equator  to  the  pole ;  and  if  it  could 
reach  the  centre  of  the  earth,  its  terrestrial  gravity  would  be 
zero.  We  can  form  no  possible  notion  of  resistance,  if  there  be 
no  somewhat  to  resist.  And  so,  all  that  list  of  the  qualities  of 
matter,  called  primary,  because  they  depend  not  upon  us,  but 
upon  the  ultimate  structure  of  body,  presuppose  a  substratum 
—  substans  —  or  substance  —  something  standing  under  and 
supporting  these  qualities.  It  is  of  this  underlying  something 
that  we  inquire. 

Let  us  then  make  a  search  for  it.  Take  any  concrete  object 
and  strip  it  of  its  properties  one  by  one ;  take  away  its  color, 
its  weight,  its  hardness,  its  figure,  size,  and  structure,  and  what- 


256  MECHANISM    AND    PERSONALITY. 

ever  else  is  discoverable  to  the  senses.  Since  its  dimensions 
are  gone,  it  must  have  lost  extension,  and  dwindled  to  a  mathe- 
matical point.  It  would  still  have  place  or  whereness,  but  posi- 
tion is  something  it  has,  not  what  it  is,  and  as  a  quality  must 
go.  It  may  still  be  thought  of  as  having  a  sort  of  ghost  of  its 
past,  as  having  once  been ;  that  must  go,  too,  and  it  will  then 
be  out  of  time  and  out  of  space,  with  nothing  predicable  of  it. 
It  will  be  just  what  we  mean  by  ' nothing' ;  and  yet  we  are  still 
speaking  of '  it ' ;  and  in  our  stripping  process,  up  to  the  last 
moment,  when  the  last  token  of  its  qualitative  existence  was 
taken  away,  we  had  to  assume  the  '  it '  as  still  existing ;  and 
unless  we  admit,  as  we  cannot,  that  quality  can  be  substance, 
since  we  have  taken  nothing  but  qualities  away,  its  being  —  its 
1  itness  '  —  must  still  remain  in  its  pure  form ;  and  we  are 
compelled  to  say  with  Hegel,  "  Pure. Being  is  Pure  Nothing." 

It  is  not  our  province  to  build  up  the  universe ;  we  have 
quite  enough  to  do,  to  understand  something  of  its  nature  and 
laws,  now  that  it  is  existent ;  but  if  we  were  to  attempt  it,  we 
should  like  some  better  footing  to  start  with  than  the  perfect 
emptiness  —  (no ;  emptiness  is  a  quality  or  condition,  and  Pure 
Being  cannot  have  even  that)  —  the  perfect  nothingness  (if 
that  does  any  better)  of  Pure  Being ;  but  even  the  qualifying 
word  '  pure  '  has  no  right  to  flourish  before  the  word  '  Being ' ; 
and,  to  have  even  '  Being/  is  to  have  the  attribute  or  quality 
of  being,  so  that  neither  this  nor  any  name  or  sign  can  be  left 
it.  It  must  not  even  be  thought  upon,  —  nay,  not  even  ban- 
ished from  thought ! 

The  first,  and  every  step  towards  recovering  reality,  as  we 
know  it  in  the  universe,  from  the  utter  nothingness  of  such  an 
ultimate  subject,  with  motor  and  movement  engulfed  of  noth- 
ing, would  present  the  absurdity  of  starting  on  a  quest  for  what 
has  no  name,  nor  place,  nor  time,  nor  other  mark  by  which  it 
could  be  known ;  and  if  this  difficulty  could  be  got  over  and 
it  could  be  found,  it  would  have  nothing  to  which  any  of  the 


CONSTRUCTION    OF    MATTER. 

qualities  it  has  given  up  could  be  attached.  And  yet  this  is 
not  far  from  what  is  attempted  by  the  Absolutists. 

We  do  not  sympathize  with  them  in  their  efforts,  and  are 
quite  content  to  expend  our  energies  in  attempting  to  under- 
stand something  of  the  actual,  beginning  our  efforts  far  this 
side  of  mere  Being.  Lotze  says  :  "  Reality  means  for  us  the 
'  Being '  of  a  somewhat  that  is  capable  of  being  affected  and 
producing  effects.  Everything  with  which  this  definition  com- 
ports, is  accordingly  called  a  '  reality,'  —  that  is  to  say,  has 
this  title.  But  there  cannot  be  a  '  reality  per  se '  —  which  were 
nothing  —  as  the  bearer  of  this  title.  What  is  supposed  to  be 
real  must  merit  this  designation  by  being  susceptible,  through 
its  own  definite  and  significant  nature,  of  having  reality  in  the 
meaning  alleged." 

To  come  back,  then,  to  '  thing,'  we  can  only  say  that  it  is 
what  by  the  nature  of  its  actual  existence,  under  the  intuitions 
of  time  and  space,  produces  effects  and  is  affected.  These 
effects  in  us  we  know,  and  so  know  '  thing,'  or  body,  or  sub- 
stance directly.  Whether  substance  is  material  or  spiritual 
we  need  not  ask,  because  the  question  really  means  nothing. 
Since,  confessedly,  nobody  knows  or  can  conceive  of  what 
matter  is,  we  travel  wholly  out  of  the  record  when  we  under- 
take to  pronounce  upon  whether  it  is  like  this,  or  like  that. 
Matter  is  just  what  it  is,  and  just  as  it  is,  it  appears  to  us  — 
now  in  one  phase,  now  in  another,  all  equally  true,  and  equally 
real.  The  very  nature  and  purpose  of  '  thing  '  is  to  affect  us 
and  other  things ;  and  when  we  try  to  force  another  meaning, 
which  seeks  to  see  beneath  the  nature  of  '  thing,'  and  find  an- 
other nature  upon  which  its  world-nature  is  founded,  we  but 
commit  ourselves  to  an  infinite  regressus. 

This  is,  substantially,  the  position  of  Bishop  Berkeley,  whom 
so  many  people,  even  to  this  day,  fail  to  understand.  "  I  am 
of  a  vulgar  cast,"  he  says,  "  simple  enough  to  believe  my  senses, 
and  leave  things  as  I  find  them.  To  be  plain,  it  is  my  opinion 


258  MECHANISM    AND    PERSONALITY. 

that  the  real  things  are  those  very  things  I  see  and  feel  and 
perceive  by  my  senses,"  Again,  "  For  my  part,  I  can  as  well 
doubt  of  my  being  as  of  the  being  of  those  things  which  I 
actually  perceive  by  sense ;  it  being  a  manifest  contradiction 
that  any  sensible  object  should  be  immediately  perceived  by 
sight  or  touch,  and  at  the  same  time  have  no  existence  in 
nature,  since  the  very  existence  of  an  unthinking  being  consists 
in  being  perceived" 

This  he  is  constantly  declaring,  and  yet,  the  world,  in  the 
main,  will  have  it  —  great  and  good  men  insisted  upon  it  in  his 
day —  that  he  did  not  believe  in  the  reality  of  things.  One  is  at 
liberty  to  reject  his  theory,  but  not  to  misrepresent  what  he 
taught.  "  I  do  not  argue,"  he  says,  "  against  the  existence  of 
any  one  thing  that  we  can  apprehend  either  by  sense  or  reflec- 
tion. That  the  things  I  see  with  my  eyes  and  touch  with  my 
hands  do  exist,  really  exist,  I  make  not  the  least  question.  The 
only  thing  whose  existence  we  deny  is  that  which  philosophers 
call  matter  or  corporeal  substance.  And  in  doing  this,  there 
is  no  damage  done  to  the  rest  of  mankind,  who,  I  dare  say, 
will  never  miss  it."  His  denial  is  only  of  that  '  nothing-'  which 
we  found  to  remain  in  thought  after  everything  had  been  taken 
away  from  our  object  a  moment  ago.  Berkeley's  position  is 
admirably  put  by  Lewes  in  his  "  Biographical  History  of  Phi- 
losophy." "  If  by  matter  you  understand  that  which  is  seen, 
felt,  tasted,  and  touched,  then  I  say  matter  exists ;  I  am  as 
firm  a  believer  in  its  existence  as  any  one  can  be,  and  herein  I 
agree  with  the  vulgar.  If,  on  the  contrary,  you  understand  by 
matter  that  occult  substratum  which  is  not  seen,  not  felt,  not 
tasted,  and  not  touched,  —  that  of  which  the  senses  do  not, 
cannot,  inform  you,  —  then  I  say  I  believe  not  in  the  existence 
of  matter,  and  herein  I  differ  from  the  philosophers  and  agree 
with  the  vulgar." 

This  presents  the  issue  sharply.  Nobody  denies  the  exist- 
ence of  matter  in  the  phenomenal  sense,  i.e.  as  a  somewhat 


CONSTRUCTION    OF    MATTER.  259 

which  offers  resistance,  and  is  known  to  the  self.  But  the 
question  is  as  to  whether,  if  we  could  go  on  dividing  and  divid- 
ing, and  could  carry  the  process  far  enough,  we  should  finally 
come  to  bits  of  matter  incapable  of  further  division  or  change  ; 
that  is,  whether  there  is  an  eternally  subsisting,  dead,  unknown, 
and  unknowable  stuff  out  of  which  the  external  universe  is  con- 
structed, or  not.  It  was  this  which  was  questioned  by  Berke- 
ley, and  is  questioned  by  the  advanced  thinkers,  metaphysicians, 
and  physicists  in  our  day  as  welL 

It  will  be  well,  certainly  interesting,  to  consider  briefly  what 
is  thought  of  the  nature  of  matter  from  the  side  of  analytical 
physics. 

Dr.  Thomas  Young,  than  whom  a  more  profound  mathema- 
tician and  physicist  scarce  ever  lived,  in  discussing  the  theory 
of  light  a  hundred  years  ago,  came  to  the  conclusion  that  the 
diameter  of  a  particle  in  a  substance  of  the  density  of  water 
"  must  be  less  than  the  hundred  and  forty  thousandth  part  of 
its  distance  from  its  neighboring  particle,  and  thus  the  whole 
space  occupied  by  the  substance  must  be  as  little  filled  as  the 
whole  of  England  would  be  by  a  hundred  men,  placed  at  the 
distances  of  about  thirty  miles  from  each  other." 

Upon  this  hypothesis,  a  particle  of  such  a  substance  would  be 
relatively  about  twelve  times  further  from  its  neajest  neighbor 
than  the  earth  is  from  the  sun ;  or,  to  put  it  a  little  differently, 
if  the  particle  were  magnified  to  the  size  of  the  earth,  and  the 
distance  in  the  same  ratio,  the  particle  would  be  more  than  a 
billion  of  miles  removed  from  its  nearest  neighbors. 

Since  Dr.  Young's  day  the  mathematicians  have  done  an 
immense  work  in  molecular  physics,  so  that  it  is  now  a  well- 
established  title  in  mechanics.  We  can  but  glance  at  some  of 
the  salient  points  touching  the  construction  of  matter. 

Perhaps  the  most  famous  of  all  the  hypotheses  on  the  subject 
of  the  composition  of  matter  is  that  put  forth,  now  more  than 
a  hundred  years  ago,  by  Father  Boscovich,  a  Jesuit  priest. 


260  MECHANISM    AND    PERSONALITY. 

He  attempts  to  get  rid  of  a  difficulty  which  meets  those  who 
contend  for  the  continuity  of  matter,  and  those  who  hold  that 
it  is  discrete,  or  composed  of  aggregations  of  elements  of  such 
character  as  to  be  in  the  last  analysis  essential  units.  Those 
who,  like  Descartes,  hold  that  extension  is  the  essence  of 
matter,  are  of  the  first  class ;  and  in  their  view  there  can  be 
no  separation  of  one  bit  of  matter,  either  large  or  small,  from 
another,  but  there  is  a  material  plenum,  or  absolute  fulness,  in 
the  universe.  This  may  be  better  understood  by  applying  the 
notion  to  a  substance  of  a  homogeneous  character,  such  as 
water,  in  which  all  drops  flow  into  each  other  so  that  there  is 
no  discontinuity.  The  whole  may  be  divided  into  drops ;  the 
drops  when  thus  apparently  separated  have  matter,  as  air, 
which  connects  them,  and  if  these  should  be  separated  again, 
there  is  still  a  subtler  form  of  matter,  as  ether,  which  maintains 
the  continuity.  Thus  we  may  and  must  have  the  possibility  of 
infinite  divisibility,  but  never  discontinuity. 

The  other  school  of  thought  hold  that  there  are  ultimate 
atoms,  very  small  indeed,  but  still  of  some  magnitude,  and  of 
such  character  as  to  defy  all  possible  effort  at  diremption ;  and 
that  these  distinct  and  separate  entities,  lying  far  below  our 
powers  of  vision,  exist  according  to  certain  laws  or  orders,  and 
compose  what  we  know  as  substance. 

Boscovich  abandons  the  notion  of  any  ultimate,  hard,  self- 
subsisting  bodies  or  atoms  in  this  sense,  and  holds  that  there 
are  only  mathematical  points  existing,  in  the  ultimate  analysis, 
which  however  he  endows  with  mass  or  inertia,  and  makes 
capable  of  retaining  their  identity,  with  power  of  movement, 
and  of  action  and  reaction  on  other  like  endowed  points. 
They  are  centres  of  '  force,'  attractive  and  repulsive,  alternat- 
ing according  to  the  distances  between  them;  ending  on 
the  one  hand  in  the  law  of  gravitation,  when  the  distance  is 
greater  than  about  a  thousandth  of  an  inch,  and  on  the  other, 
in  insuperable  repulsion,  when  one  point-atom  is  infinitely  close 


CONSTRUCTION    OF    MATTER.  26 1 

to  another.  Two  of  these  atoms  can  never  occupy  the  same' 
place,  and  can  never  be  in  actual  contact,  since  such  contact 
would  require  an  infinite  force.  Now,  since  there  are  alterna- 
tions of  the  force  of  attraction  and  repulsion,  there  must  be  at 
certain  distances  positions  of  neutrality ;  that  is,  where  attrac- 
tion changes  into  repulsion,  or  the  reverse.  These  are  posi- 
tions of  equilibrium  or  permanence.  Now,  a  certain  number 
of  these  force-atoms,  lying  in  every  possible  direction  from 
each  other,  occupying  positions  of  neutrality,  must  be  in  a  state 
of  equilibrium,  and  constitute  a  system.  They  will  defend 
their  ground  against  all  other  systems  by  the  law  of  composi- 
tion and  distance,  so  that  we  thus  have  sensible  bodies,  when 
there  are  enough  of  such  communities  to  produce  a  reaction  on 
our  sensibilities. 

If  the  distances  between  these  centres  are  changed  by  being 
forced  into  new  positions  of  neutrality,  either  closer  together  or 
further  apart,  the  nature  of  the  substance  is  changed ;  so  that 
the  differences  between  all  material  substances  are  accounted 
for  by  the  more  or  less  remoteness  of  the  assumed  centres  in 
its  constitution,  and  are  not  at  all  due  to  any  essential  differ- 
ences in  the  original  stuff. 

This  theory  at  first  blush  seems  wild  enough.  But  as  modi- 
fied by  the  latest  results  of  molecular  science,  it  stands  its 
ground ;  nor  do  the  physicists,  in  a  general  way,  and  with  an 
exception  to  be  noted,  seem  to  see  or  desire  any  escape.  Ac- 
cepting Professor  Clerk  Maxwell  as  authority,  we  shall  follow 
him  chiefly  in  stating  the  assumptions  and  conclusions  of 
molecular  mechanics. 

First,  bodies  are  made  up  of  parts,  each  part  being  capable 
of  motion,  and  these  parts  act  and  react  on  each  other  in  con- 
sonance with  the  principle  of  the  conservation  of  energy.  All 
these  parts  are  in  motion,  rest  being  only  a  particular  case  of 
motion.  "  The  phenomena  of  the  diffusion  of  gases  and  liquids 


262  MECHANISM    AND    PERSONALITY. 

through  each  other  show  that  there  may  be  a  motion  of  the 
small  parts  of  a  body  which  is  not  perceptible  to  us." 

The  small  parts  are  not  assumed  to  be  of  one  uniform  mag- 
nitude, nor  even  to  have  magnitude  and  figure  at  all.  Each  of 
them  must  have  mass,  and  they  must  have  the  power  of  acting 
on  each  other,  when  near  enough,  like  visible  bodies.  The 
properties  of  body  are  determined  by  the  configuration  and 
movement  of  its  small  parts. 

The  investigations  which  lead  to  the  conclusions  arrived  at 
in  this  branch  of  mechanics  are  chiefly  based  upon  the  nature 
and  action  of  gases  under  what  is  known  as  the  '  kinetic  theory 
of  gases.'  It  is,  in  brief,  that  a  gas  consists  of  a  swarm  of  per- 
fectly elastic  molecules  in  constant  motion  with  different  veloci- 
ties, acting  on  each  other  only  when  they  come  infinitesimally 
close,  —  a  thing,  however,  which  rarely  happens,  —  at  all  other 
times  moving  freely  in  unobstructed  paths,  the  dimensions  of 
the  unoccupied  spaces  being  immensely  great  compared  with 
the  diameter  of  the  molecules.  The  molecules  impinging 
against  the  sides  of  the  containing  vessel  are  driven  back  in  all 
possible  directions,  and  without  loss  of  velocity. 

We  have  nothing  to  do  here  with  the  theory,  as  such,  nor 
can  we  follow,  even  in  outline,  the  mathematical  and  experi- 
mental reasoning  in  its  favor.  Proposed  by  Kroenig,  given  form 
to  by  Clausius,  modified  and  sustained  by  Maxwell  and  Thomp- 
son, it  holds  the  favor  of  the  scientific  world.  It  is  directly 
dependent  upon  the  theory  of  molecules,  and  perhaps  now  on 
Sir  William  Thompson's  theory  of  vortical  atoms. 

Let  us  see  what  a  molecule  must  be  in  order  to  accommo- 
date itself  to  the  work  required  of  it  by  the  physicists.  A 
molecule  is  a  system  composed  of  atoms,  —  the  atom  being  the 
ultimate  mass-unit.  Molecules  are  complex  and  of  different 
kinds,  the  several  orders  depending  upon  the  number  and 
arrangement  of  the  atoms  which  compose  them.  This  combi- 
nation is  not  permanent,  but  may  be  broken  up  from  one 


CONSTRUCTION    OF    MATTER.  263 

cause  or  another ;  in  which  case  new  molecular  combinations 
result,  and  the  nature  of  the  substance  which  they  compose  is 
changed.  This  is  seen  constantly  in  chemical  reactions,  as  in 
the  case  of  water ;  the  particles  are  the  result  of  the  aggrega- 
tions of  molecules  of  a  definite  composition  ;  when  this  molecu- 
lar condition  is  broken  up,  as  may  easily  be,  there  appear  two 
gases,  one  composed  of  oxygen  molecules,  and  the  other  of 
hydrogen  molecules.  A  system  of  atoms,  then,  which  hang 
together  for  a  measurable  period,  or  until  violently  disrupted, 
is  a  molecule. 

The  dimensions  and  weights  of  molecules  have  been  calcu- 
lated with  a  sufficient  degree  of  certainty  to  carry  conviction 
to  the  scientific  mind,  though  the  demand  upon  the  credulity  of 
a  layman  is  such  as  to  make  him  doubt  if  he  be  not  dreaming. 
Clerk  Maxwell  states  that  the  fair  probability  is  that  200,000,- 
000,000,000,000,000  molecules  of  hydrogen  would  weigh  a 
milligramme.  The  diameters  of  these  miniature  worlds  are  on 
much  the  same  scale  of  magnificent  littleness.  About  2,000,000 
molecules  of  hydrogen  in  a  row  would  measure  a  millimeter. 
Professor  Maxwell  tells  us  that  Loschmidt  illustrates  these 
measurements  by  the  smallest  possible  magnitude  visible  to  the 
microscope.  A  cube  whose  edge  is  the  four- thousandth  of  a 
millimeter  may  be  taken  as  the  minimum  visibile.  Such  a  cube 
would  contain  from  sixty  to  one  hundred  million  molecules  of 
oxygen  or  nitrogen ;  but  since  the  molecule  of  organized  sub- 
stances contains,  on  an  average,  about  fifty  of  the  more  ele- 
mentary atoms,  we  may  assume  that  the  smallest  organized 
particle  visible  under  the  microscope  contains  about  two  million 
molecules  of  organic  matter.  Another  way  of  putting  it  — 
for  it  passes  all  real  comprehension  in  any  farm  —  is :  if  one 
were  to  attempt  to  count  the  number  of  molecules  in  (say)  a 
metallic  mass  the  size  of  a  pin's  head,  allowing  the  count  to  be 
at  the  rate  of  a  thousand  a  second,  it  would  require  about  two 


264  MECHANISM   AND   PERSONALITY. 

billion  five  hundred  million  years  !  And  yet,  the  space  occu- 
pied is  by  no  means  full  —  would  be  called  rather  empty. 

Professor  Tait,  in  his  "  Recent  Advances,"  gives  his  readers 
a  much  needed  preliminary  caution  in  entering  upon  the  sub- 
ject of  the  structure  of  matter.  He  reminds  them  of  what 
"  every  one  worthy  the  name  of  mathematician  "  must  know, 
"  that  there  is  no  such  thing  as  absolute  size,  —  there  is  relative 
greatness  and  smallness,  —  nothing  more.  To  human  beings, 
things  appear  small  which  are  just  visible  to  the  naked  eye  — 
very  small  when  they  require  a  powerful  microscope  to  render 
them  visible.  The  distance  to  a  fixed  star  from  us  is  enormous 
compared  with  that  of  the  sun  j  but  there  is  absolutely  noth- 
ing to  show  that  even  a  portion  of  matter  which  to  our  most 
powerful  microscopes  appears  as  hopelessly  minute,  as  the 
most  distant  star  appears  in  our  telescopes,  may  not  be  as 
astonishingly  complex  in  its  structure  as  is  that  star  itself,  even 
if  it  far  exceed  our  own  sun  in  magnitude.  Nothing  is  more 
preposterously  unscientific  than  to  assert  (as  is  constantly  done 
by  the  quasi-scientific  writers  of  the  day)  that  with  the  utmost 
strides  attempted  by  science  we  should  necessarily  be  sensibly 
nearer  to  a  conception  of  the  ultimate  nature  of  matter.  Only 
sheer  ignorance  could  assert  that  there  is  any  limit  to  the 
amount  of  information  which  human  beings  may  in  time  ac- 
quire of  the  constitution  of  matter.  However  far  we  may  go, 
there  will  still  appear  before  us  something  further  to  be  assailed. 
The  small  separate  particles  of  a  gas  are  each,  no  doubt,  less 
complex  in  structure  than  the  whole  visible  universe ;  but  the 
comparison  is  a  comparison  of  two  infinities.  Think  of  this 
and  eschew  popular  science,  whose  dicta  are  pernicious  just  as 
they  are  the  outcome  of  presumptuous  ignorance." 

This  reminds  one  of  Pascal's  reflection  that  man  is  placed 
between  two  infinities,  the  infinitely  great  and  the  infinitely 
little,  the  one  just  as  marvellous  as  the  other.  It  is  natural 
that  we  should  feel,  when  an  object  passes  out  of  reach  of  the 


CONSTRUCTION    OF    MATTER.  265 

senses  that  it  loses  those  clearly  marked  differences  which  dis- 
tinguish it  while  within  their  scope  ;  though  perhaps  the  mind, 
at  least  in  our  day,  is  more  ready  to  delve  down  into  the 
unknown  in  the  direction  of  the  infinitely  little,  than  to  ascend 
into  the  realm  of  the  infinitely  great.  Clerk  Maxwell  in  speak- 
ing of  this  minute  world  points  out  that  we  are  set  face  to  face 
with  physiological  theories,  and  warns  the  histologist  not  to 
imagine  that  structural  details  of  infinitely  small  dimensions  can 
furnish  an  explanation  of  the  infinite  variety  which  exists  in  the 
properties  and  functions  of  the  most  minute  organisms.  He 
remarks  that  while  one  microscopic  germ  is  capable  of  devel- 
oping into  a  highly  organized  animal,  another  germ,  equally 
microscopic,  becomes,  when  developed,  an  animal  of  a  totally 
different  kind.  "  Do  all  the  differences,  infinite  in  number, 
which  distinguish  the  one  animal  from  the  other,"  he  asks, 
"  arise  each  from  some  difference  in  the  structure  of  the  respec- 
tive germs  ?  Even  if  we  admit  this  as  possible,  we  shall  be 
called  upon  by  the  advocates  of  Pangenesis  to  admit  still 
greater  marvels.  For  the  microscopic  germ,  according  to  this 
theory,  is  no  mere  individual,  but  a  representative  body,  con- 
taining numbers  collected  from  every  rank  of  a  long-drawn 
ramification  of  the  ancestral  tree,  the  numbers  of  these  mem- 
bers being  amply  sufficient  not  only  to  furnish  the  hereditary 
characteristics  of  every  organ  of  the  body,  and  every  habit  of 
the  animal  from  birth  to  death,  but  also  to  afford  a  stock  of 
latent  gemmules  to  be  passed  on  in  an  inactive  state  from 
germ  to  germ,  until  at  last  the  ancestral  peculiarity  which  it 
represents  is  revived  in  some  remote  descendant. 

"  Some  of  the  exponents  of  this  theory  of  heredity  have 
attempted  to  elude  the  difficulty  of  placing  a  whole  world  of 
wonders  within  a  body  so  small  and  so  devoid  of  visible  struc- 
ture as  a  germ,  by  using  the  phrase  (  structureless  germs.'  Now, 
one  material  system  can  differ  from  another  only  in  the  con- 
figuration and  motion  which  it  has  at  a  given  instant.  To 


266  MECHANISM    AND    PERSONALITY. 

explain  differences  of  function  and  development  of  a  germ 
without  assuming  differences  of  structure  is,  therefore,  to 
admit  that  the  properties  of  a  germ  are  not  those  of  a  purely 
material  system." 

Resuming  our  consideration  of  the  molecule,  we  are  told 
that  the  results  of  spectroscopic  investigations  confirm  the  fact, 
already  arrived  at,  that  in  gases,  when  in  a  rarefied  condition, 
each  molecule  is  at  such  distances  from  every  other  that  it  exe- 
cutes its  vibrations  in  an  undisturbed  and  regular  manner. 

But  serious  difficulties  present  themselves  in  the  way  of  the 
unit-atoms  out  of  which  the  molecule  is  built.  To  quote  our 
authority  again  :  "  The  small,  hard  body  imagined  by  Lucretius, 
and  adopted  by  Newton,  was  intended  for  the  express  purpose 
of  accounting  for  the  permanence  of  the  properties  of  bodies. 
But  it  fails  to  account  for  the  vibrations  of  a  molecule  as  re- 
vealed by  the  spectroscope.  We  may  indeed  suppose  the  atom 
elastic,  but  this  is  to  endow  it  with  the  very  property  for  the 
explanation  of  which,  as  exhibited  in  aggregate  bodies,  the 
atomic  constitution  was  originally  assumed.  The  massive  cen- 
tres of  force  imagined  by  Boscovich  may  have  more  to  recom- 
mend them  to  the  mathematician,  who  has  no  scruple  in 
supposing  them  to  be  invested  with  the  power  of  attracting  and 
repelling  according  to  any  law  of  the  distance  which  it  may 
please  him  to  assign.  Such  centres  of  force  are  no  doubt  in 
their  own  nature  indivisible,  but  then  they  are  also,  singly,  in- 
capable of  vibration.  To  obtain  vibration  we  must  imagine 
molecules  consisting  of  many  such  centres  ;  but,  in  so  doing,  the 
possibility  of  these  centres  being  separated  altogether  is  again 
introduced.  Besides,  it  is  questionable  scientific  taste,  after 
using  atoms  so  freely  to  get  rid  of  forces  acting  at  sensible  dis- 
tances, to  make  the  whole  function  of  the  atoms  an  action  at 
insensible  distances." 

To  meet  these  difficulties,  Sir  William  Thompson,  taking  up 
the  work  of  Helmholtz  on  the  subject  of  vortical  motion  —  work 


CONSTRUCTION    OF    MATTER.  267 

based  upon  the  foundations  laid  by  Lagrange  and  other  great 
mathematicians  of  the  last  century  —  has  advanced  a  new 
phase  of  the  composition  of  matter.  It  is  called  the  theory 
of  Vortex-atoms,  and  is  received  with  decided  favor  by  the 
mathematicians.  He  would  be  a  bold  man  who  should  say  that 
he  fully  understands  it.  It  relies  entirely  upon  the  higher 
analysis  in  method  —  indeed  its  author  and  those  who  pretend 
to  follow  him,  complain  that  the  calculus  and  other  known 
methods  have  not  sufficient  grasp  to  handle  the  questions  it 
presents.  We  therefore  cannot  be  expected  to  do  much  to 
make  it  comprehensible  ;  but  we  may  get  some  notion  of  its 
general  trend  by  sticking  pretty  close  to  Professor  Tait's  ex- 
planation. 

First,  it  is  easy  enough  to  understand  the  vortex-ring.  We 
have  an  illustration  in  the  rings  an  expert  smoker  sometimes 
makes  for  the  amusement  of  children  —  making  a  round  hole 
with  his  lips  and  emitting  the  smoke  in  puffs.  Indeed,  it  seems 
to  have  been  an  illustration  of  this  kind,  made  by  Professor 
Tait  (only  he  used  a  box  filled  with  ammoniacal  gas,  and  driven 
out  of  a  hole  in  one  end  by  blows  upon  a  flexible  substance  at 
the  other),  which  first  suggested  the  theory  to  Sir  William 
Thompson.  Such  a  vortex-ring  moves  as  if  it  were  an  inde- 
pendent solid  ;  and  "  if  the  air  were  a  perfect  fluid,  —  if  there 
were  no  such -thing  as  fluid-friction  in  air,"  — such  a  vortex-ring 
would  move  on  forever  as  a  solid  mass.  When  two  such  rings, 
even  in  air  so  little  complying  with  the  conditions  of  a  perfect 
fluid  "  impinge  upon  one  another,  they  behave  like  solid  elastic 
rings.  They  vibrate  vehemently  after  the  shock,  just  as  if  they 
were  solid  rings  of  india-rubber."  These  rings  may  be  varied 
—  practically,  to  some  extent  —  theoretically,  without  limit. 
Vortex-filaments  may  exist  with  any  number  of  knots  and  twists 
in  them  —  and,  practically  they  may  be  made  to  link  together 
and  present  a  certain  degree  of  permanence. 

All  this  is  yet  worlds  away  from  the  vortex-atom  ;  but  assume 


268  MECHANISM   AND   PERSONALITY. 

a  perfect  fluid,  possessed  of  inertia,  invariable  density,  and  per- 
fect mobility,  —  call  in  the  powerful  aid  of  mathematical  anal- 
ysis, —  refine  and  continue  to  refine,  until  the  ordinary  thinker 
has  been  hopelessly  left  behind,  and  somewhere  in  such  a 
thought-spun  world  the  vortex-atom  may  exist. 

If  the  proposed  theory  be  a  true  explanation  of  the  facts  of 
nature,  then  rotary  motion  of  the  proposed  perfect  fluid  (which 
itself  is  not  matter ;  matter  being  a  mode  of  motion  of  this 
fluid)  is  the  mechanical  basis  of  all  that  appeals  to  our  senses. 
The  theory,  however,  is  not  yet  established ;  but  we  cannot 
fail  to  see  in  the  persistent  efforts  to  overcome  the  difficulties 
in  the  way  of  the  atom,  how  desperately  shaken  the  scientific 
world  is  as  to  the  nature  of  matter.  We  shall  have  to  wait 
patiently  on  the  mathematicians  (the  controversy  being  far 
beyond  all  mere  experimental  method),  since,  as  Professor  Tait 
tells  us,  "  to  investigate  what  takes  place  when  one  circular  vor- 
tex-atom impinges  upon  another,  and  the  whole  motion  is  not 
symmetrical  about  an  axis,  is  a  task  which  may  employ  perhaps 
the  lifetimes,  for  the  next  two  or  three  generations,  of  the  best 
mathematicians  in  Europe ;  unless,  in  the  meantime,  some 
mathematical  method,  enormously  more  powerful  than  any- 
thing we  at  present  have,  be  devised  for  the  purpose  of  solving 
this  special  problem." 

That  there  are  serious  difficulties  lying  in  the  way  of  the  vor- 
tex-atom is  freely  confessed.  Should  it  succeed  in  getting 
itself  thoroughly  established  from  the  rotarial  and  kinematic 
side,  it  has  still  grave  difficulties  to  encounter.  Among  these 
is,  the  demand  upon  it,  as  upon  all  other  theories,  to  account 
for  mass  and  gravitation.  In  Thompson's  theory,  mass  —  that 
is  to  say,  inertia  —  is  assumed  in  the  perfect  fluid.  But  inertia 
is  a  property  of  matter,  and  not  a  property  of  motion.  The 
difficulty  remains  without  serious  attempt  at  solution. 

With  regard  to  gravitation,  the  mathematicians  agree  that 
present  methods  are  sufficient  to  show  that  the  vortex-atoms 


CONSTRUCTION   OF   MATTER.  269 

cannot  be  allowed  to  exert  a  pull  on  each  other  such  as  is  now 
assumed  to  exist  between  bodies  ;  so  that  a  serious  alternative 
is  presented  at  once  —  either  the  theory  must  go,  or  this 
assumed  attraction  of  gravitation  is  not  a  fact  of  nature. 

This  looks  threatening,  but  there  is  a  possibility  of  escape. 
Le  Sage,  of  Geneva,  put  forth  a  theory,  now  nearly  a  hundred 
years  ago,  to  explain  gravitation  —  or  rather,  to  explain  it  away, 
so  far  at  least  as  the  notion  of  a  pull  between  bodies  enters  it. 
It  is  entirely  in  line  with  the  trend  of  modern  mechanics,  and 
serves  the  turn  of  Thompson's  theory  fairly  well ;  and  is  also 
far  enough  out  of  the  run  of  common  thought  to  delight 
the  wildest  scientific  imagination.  A  brief  statement  must 
suffice. 

Le  Sage  proposed  to  abandon  the  notion  that  bodies  or 
masses,  large  or  small,  are  pulled  together  by  solicitations  sub- 
sisting between  material  elements,  and  to  adopt  instead  the 
notion  that  they  are  driven  together  by  the  impact  of  streams 
of  ultra-mundane  corpuscules  which  are  flying  about  in  all  pos- 
sible directions.  These  he  supposes  to  come  with  enormous 
velocities  from  regions  infinitely  remote,  and  to  be  so  minute, 
compared  with  the  distances  between  them,  that  a  collision  can 
rarely  happen.  If  a  particle  of  gross  or  common  matter  could 
be  exposed  to  this  ceaseless  pelting  from  every  conceivable 
quarter,  the  result  would  be  that  the  blows  would,  on  the  whole, 
neutralize  each  other,  and  the  particle  would  retain  its  place ; 
but  this  could  never  happen,  since  the  other  particles  in  exist- 
ence must  be  taken  into  account.  Every  particle  must  shield 
every  other  from  a  portion  of  this  pelting,  and  just  in  so  far 
each  particle  will  have  its  equilibrium  disturbed,  and  so  be 
driven  in  the  direction  of  least  resistance,  with  a  velocity  pre- 
cisely the  same  as  that  now  effected  by  the  supposed  pulling 
power  of  gravitation,  the  law  of  the  inverse  squares  obtaining 
as  before.  Of  course  the  space  occupied  by  gross  matter  must 
be  so  little  filled  by  the  essential  atoms  composing  it,  as  to 


2/O  MECHANISM    AND    PERSONALITY. 

permit  the  enormously  greater  number  of  ultra-mundane  cor- 
puscules  to  pass  through  unimpeded. 

By  this  theory  the  vortex-atoms  would  be  saved  the  need  of 
being  what  is  called  heavy,  or  of  imparting  weight  to  the  bodies 
they  compose  ;  all  this  would  be  relegated  to  the  ultra- mundane 
—  ultra-stellar  —  corpuscules,  without  inquiring  as  to  what  that 
region  can  really  be,  or  how  the  projectile  energy  is  originally 
generated. 

There  is  another  fundamental  hypothesis  of  physics  which 
demands  attention,  and  that  is  the  assumption  of  the  existence 
of  an  inter-stellar  medium,  called  ether.  The  marvels  of  the 
atomic  theories  have  drawn  heavily  upon  our  imaginations,  but 
in  this  a  still  larger  demand  is  made  upon  us. 

The  need  of  something  to  fill  the  immeasurable  spaces 
between  the  myriad  worlds  is,  from  a  metaphysical  point  of 
view,  very  urgent.  To  say  there  is  '  nothing '  is  to  use  the 
word  in  a  sense  far  this  side  of  the  absolute  naught.  To  say 
that  it  is  filled  by  space  is,  as  we  shall  see  further  on,  mislead- 
ing and  void  of  meaning.  But  we  pass  this. 

The  need  of  some  sort  of  medium  from  the  physical  stand- 
point is  equally  urgent.  The  question  presents  itself  sharply 
in  the  undulatory  theory  of  light.  The  Newtonian  or  Corpus- 
cular theory  was  —  for  it  may  be  now  considered  dead  —  that 
light  was  a  material  substance,  consisting  of  extremely  small 
corpuscules  emitted  from  luminous  objects  and  producing  the 
sensation  of  light  by  impinging  upon  the  eye.  They  were  sup- 
posed to  be  shot  to  the  earth  from  the  sun  and  other  luminous 
bodies,  and  thus  the  demand  for  an  intervening  substance  was 
obviated,  at  least,  from  the  physical  point  of  view ;  but  diffi- 
culties of  its  own  immediately  presented  themselves.  The 
theory  was  questioned,  almost  from  the  beginning.  With  the 
enormous  velocity,  —  nearly  two  hundred  thousand  miles  a 
second,  —  and  with  the  least  possible  mass  in  the  corpuscules, 
the  momentum  would  inevitably  destroy  such  a  delicate  organ 


CONSTRUCTION    OF    MATTER.  2/1 

as  the  eye ;  but  the  most  refined  test  fails  to  detect  the  slight- 
est possible  signs  of  impact.  There  are  many  other  difficulties 
in  the  way  of  the  emission  theory,  the  most  decisive  perhaps 
being  found  in  its  inability  to  explain  many  phenomena,  espe- 
cially those  due  to  what  is  now  known  as  '  interference.'  As  a 
single  example,  in  the  case  of  light  from  one  definite  source, 
divided  into  two  portions  by  mirrors,  so  that  they  shall  fall  on 
a  screen  in  such  wise  that  the  paths  passed  over  shall  differ  by 
a  certain  very  slight  distance,  while  either  part  alone  produces 
light  only,  when  the  other  part  is  added,  dark  spaces  appear. 
There  is  no  possible  reason  for  these  dark  areas  except  the 
added  light ;  so  that  the  increase  of  light  produces  darkness. 
This  could  not  be  if  it  were  a  substance. 

The  theory  of  Newton  has  given  way  to  what  is  known  as  the 
Undulatory,  or  Wave  Theory  of  light.  It  was  originally  sug- 
gested, perhaps,  by  Hooke,  a  celebrated  contemporary  of  New- 
ton, but  it  first  took  shape  in  the  hands  of  the  great  astronomer 
and  mathematician,  Christian  Huygens.  It  is  not  necessary  to 
say  more  than  that,  granted  an  intervening  substance  of  high 
elasticity,  a  disturbance  at  one  point  must  be  propagated  with 
great  rapidity  throughout  its  extent,  and  without  the  conse- 
quences which  would  attend  a  projectile  under  like  velocity. 

Such  media,  under  the  name  of  ethers,  had  been  freely 
assumed  in  the  past,  extending  back  to  the  remotest  antiquity, 
to  account  for  all  manner  of  phenomena.  At  the  time,  and 
shortly  after  Huygens  proposed  his  luminiferous  ether,  the  feel- 
ing in  the  minds  of  scientific  men  against  ether  hypotheses,  no 
doubt,  acted  to  prejudice  most  students  of  science  against  the 
new  theory.  Certain  it  is,  that  it  was  opposed  by  the  most 
eminent  mathematicians  and  physicists,  Laplace,  Malus,  Biot, 
Brewster,  etc.,  and  that  the  theory  of  Newton  maintained  its 
ground  until,  in  the  early  part  of  this  century,  it  was  attacked 
by  Dr.  Thomas  Young,  backed  by  Augustin  Fresnel.  The  con- 
test was  long  and  animated,  but  they  succeeded  in  adducing 


272  MECHANISM    AND    PERSONALITY. 

so  many  phenomena  which  the  corpuscular  theory  could  not 
account  for,  and  which  the  other  handled  easily,  that  the  old 
theory  had  to  give  way.  It  was  given  its  coup  de  grace,  per- 
haps, by  Foucault  when  he  succeeded  experimentally  in  prov- 
ing that  light  travels  more  slowly  through  water  than  through 
air,  —  a  condition  of  things  demanded  by  the  new  theory,  but 
directly  in  contravention  of  the  requirements  of  the  old. 

The  wave  theory  has  not  only  met  the  demands  upon  it  in 
explaining  the  observed  phenomena  of  light,  but  years  ago  it 
enabled  Fresnel  to  anticipate  '  circular  polarization/  and  re- 
cently the  theory,  in  the  hands  of  Sir  W.  Rowan  Hamilton, 
achieved  a  triumph  in  optics  quite  analogous  to  the  astronomi- 
cal feat  of  Leverrier  and  Adams  in  discovering  the  planet 
Neptune. 

The  vindication  of  the  existence  of  a  luminiferous  ether 
seems  complete ;  so  much  so,  at  least,  that  all  cognate  phe- 
nomena have  come  to  lean  confidently  upon  it  for  the  ground 
of  their  explanation.  But  the  demands  of  the  theory  upon  the 
nature  of  the  medium  are  exceedingly  exacting.  The  phenom- 
ena of  polarization,  as  explained  under  the  theory,  make  it 
absolutely  necessary  that  the  vibration  shall  be  transverse  to  the 
direction  of  propagation,  and  there  is  thus  imposed  upon  the 
ether  the  necessity  of  being  a  solid.  But  this  is  not  the  worst ; 
it  must  be  a  solid  of  such  rigidity  as  passes  all  comprehension. 
Its  elastic  force  is  reckoned  to  be  over  one  million  times  that 
of  air  at  the  surface  of  the  earth,  which  so  far  exceeds  that  of 
any  known  substance  as  not  to  be  named  in  the  same  breath  : 
a  pressure  which  may  be  represented  by  the  weight  of  a  pile  of 
granite  blocks  a  foot  square  at  the  base  and  something  like 
twenty  million  miles  high.  And  yet  we,  the  earth,  and  all  mov- 
ing bodies,  dense  and  rare,  pass  through  it,  or  it  through  them, 
without  discoverable  resistance. 

It  is  still  an  open  question  as  to  whether  this  ether  is  con- 
tinuous or  discrete.  It  is  not  ordinary  or  gross  matter,  but 


CONSTRUCTION    OF    MATTER.  2/3 

whether  it  is  molecular  in  structure,  or  what  is  its  constitution, 
is  not  agreed  upon  by  science.  Neither  is  it  perfectly  homo- 
geneous, i.e.  equally  distributed  in  all  kinds  of  solids  and  other 
forms  of  gross  matter,  since  light  travels  at  different  rates 
through  substances  of  different  densities,  which  means  that  the 
elasticity  of  the  medium  of  transmission  must  differ  in  such 
substances.  The  theory  of  light,  assuming  the  existence  of 
the  luminiferous  ether,  has  still  difficulties  of  its  own  to  meet, 
and  the  demand  is  rapidly  returning  for  a  variety  of  ethers. 
At  any  rate,  the  mathematicians  show  little  disposition  to  settle 
down  permanently  upon  this  single  hypothesis,  or  to  agree  as 
to  the  demands  to  be  made  upon  it. 

But,  not  to  pursue  the  subject  further,  it  must  be  admitted 
that  the  hope  of  reducing  all  phenomena  to  a  homogeneous 
substratum  free  from  contradictions  is  very  remote ;  and  even 
if  this  could  be  accomplished,  the  old  world-cry  would  still  go 
up,  What  is  it?  and  Whence  came  it?  Further  than  this,  it 
will  hardly  do  for  the  physicists  to  cast  scorn  upon  the  meta- 
physicians on  account  of  the  refinements  and  subtleties  in  which 
they  sometimes  indulge,  in  view  of  the  purely  metaphysical 
regions  and  the  metaphysical  speculations  into  which  science  is 
itself  so  necessarily  driven. 

As  it  is,  we  may  safely  conclude  that  the  physicists  do  not 
know  what  '  thing '  is  more  certainly  than  the  metaphysicians. 
Even  if  the  conclusion  be  that  atoms  are  definite  material  enti- 
ties or  world-stuff,  the  question  is  only  pushed  back  to  one 
deeper  still.  What  and  why  they  are  at  all,  rises  up  and  de- 
mands an  answer  as  surely  as  any  phenomenon  in  nature.  Clerk 
Maxwell  says  :  "  In  the  present  state  of  science,  we  have  strong 
reasons  for  believing  that  in  a  molecule,  or  if  not  in  a  molecule, 
in  one  of  its  constituent  atoms,  we  have  something  which  has 
existed  either  from  eternity  or  at  least  from  times  anterior  to 
the  existing  order  of  nature.  But  besides  this  atom,  there  are 
immense  numbers  of  other  atoms  of  the  same  kind,  and  the 


2/4  MECHANISM    AND    PERSONALITY. 

constants  of  each  of  these  atoms  are  incapable  of  adjustment 
by  any  process  now  in  action.  Each  is  physically  independent 
of  all  the  others. 

"Whether  or  not  the  conception  of  a  multitude  of  beings 
existing  from  all  eternity  is  in  itself  self-contradictory,  the  con- 
ception becomes  palpably  absurd  when  we  attribute  a  relation 
of  quantitive  equality  to  all  these  beings.  We  are  then  forced 
to  look  beyond  them  to  some  common  cause  or  common  origin 
to  explain  why  this  singular  relation  of  equality  exists,  rather 
than  any  one  of  the  infinite  number  of  possible  relations  of 
inequality." 

Professor  Maxwell  refers  to  Sir  John  Herschel's  remark  that 
atoms  are  to  be  compared  to  '  manufactured  articles '  on  ac- 
count of  their  uniformity,  and,  after  giving  the  several  possible 
meanings  the  expression  may  bear,  says  :  "  Which  of  these  was 
present  to  the  mind  of  Sir  John  Herschel  we  cannot  now  posi- 
tively affirm,  but  it  was  at  least  as  likely  to  have  been  the  last 
as  the  first,  though  it  seems  more  probable  that  he  meant  to 
assert  that  a  number  of  exactly  similar  things  cannot  be  each  of 
them  eternal  and  self- existent,  and  must  therefore  have  been 
made,  and  that  he  used  the  phrase  '  manufactured  articles  '  to 
suggest  the  idea  of  their  being  made  in  great  numbers." 


MATHEMATICS    NOT    ULTIMATELY   EXACT.  2/5 


CHAPTER  XXV. 

MATHEMATICS   NOT  ULTIMATELY   EXACT. 

Position  of  mathematics  in  scientific  inquiries.  Mathematical  processes, 
develop  contradictions.  Surds.  Asymptotes.  Graphical  illustration.  Cis- 
soid  of  Diocles.  Other  cases.  Right-lines  intersecting  with  no  common 
point.  The  concept  '  infinity.'  Illustration. 

SINCE  the  days  of  Newton,  the  position  of  the  mathema- 
ticians with  respect  to  physics  has  been  assured  ;  but  it 
has  not  been  until  our  own  times  that  their  supremacy  in  this 
regard  has  been  fully  recognized.  They  absolutely  dominate 
mechanics,  and  mechanics  is  now  admitted  to  be  the  very  soul 
of  physics.  After  mathematical  analysis  has  laid  hold  upon  a 
subject,  and  pronounced  a  conclusion,  the  case  is  closed,  in 
so  far,  at  least,  as  the  facts  assumed  are  warranted.  In  the 
hands  of  genius  this  inexorable  thought-machine  has  accom- 
plished wonders,  and  the  mathematician  still  has  wide  fields 
before  him,  with,  no  doubt,  better  methods  yet  to  come.  We 
hear  Professor  Tait  crying  out  for  a  more  powerful  instrument 
with  which  to  handle  successfully  the  vortex-atom  ;  and  it  is 
not  unreasonable  to  expect,  in  view  of  the  recent  splendid  dis- 
covery of  Quaternions,  that  other  and  still  more  subtle  analyti- 
cal methods  will  be  brought  to  the  aid  of  physics. 

Recognizing  the  title  of  the  mathematics  to  the  front  rank 
of  scientific  thought,  and  with  an  admiration  little  short  of 
reverence  for  its  magic  powers,  it  will  not,  I  hope,  be  thought 
out  of  place  to  show,  in  an  elementary  way,  that  not  only  are 
there  serious  incompatibilities  in  the  subject-matter  submitted 
to  investigation  at  its  hands,  but  that  the  instrument  itself, 


2/6  MECHANISM    AND    PERSONALITY. 

though  the  most  perfect  known,  has  its  own  incompatibilities 
—  a  fact  which  shows  how  impossible  it  is  to  raise  even  the 
most  exact  methods  of  thought  above  the  possibility  of  emerg- 
ing contradictions. 

In  the  first  place,  Arithmetic  is  full  of  incompatibilities.  As 
one  out  of  any  number  of  examples,  take  the  case  of  a  surd. 
The  Vy  (say)  must  have  a  definite  value,  and  yet  it  has  not, — 
or  rather  its  value  is  neither  entire  nor  fractional.  We  can 
•approximate  it  as  near  as  we  please,  thus,  2.645751-!-,  and 
the  decimal  can  be  extended  indefinitely ;  but  if  it  were  drawn 
out  across  the  earth's  orbit  to  Aldebaran,  there  would  yet  be 
something  lacking.  But,  it  may  be  said,  since  this  difference 
is  growing  less  and  less  at  each  remove,  it  would  disappear  at 
last  if  the  operation  could  be  extended  far  enough.  Not  so; 
it  is  easily  shown1  that  the  exact  value  is  impossible.  Thus 
it  appears  that  while  this  value  must  be  somewhere  between 
2  and  3,  it  cannot  be  at  any  exact  point  between,  which  is  a 
flat  contradiction. 

The  incommensurability  of  magnitudes  discovers  itself  every- 
where in  geometry,  as  in  the  rectification  and  quadrature  of 
the  circle,  the  side  and  diagonal  of  a  square,  etc. 

Imaginary  expressions,  that  is,  the  indicated  even  roots  of 
negative  quantities,  are  also  inconceivable.  It  is  impossible 
that  any  such  root  can  exist ;  and  yet  the  Algebra  has  no  diffi- 
culty in  handling  such  expressions  —  combining  and  recom- 
bining  them  and  arriving  at  perfectly  definite  and  correct 
results. 

The  asymptotic  curves  are   also  examples  of  incompatible 

1  The  proof  is  very  simple.  Thus,  let  the  v^  be  an7  surd-  If  its 
value  be  expressible  by  a  fraction,  let  t  be  such  fraction  in  its  simplest 

_     p  pi  pi 

form.    Then  Va  —  -,  and  from  this  we  have  a  =  —%.     But  -%  must  be  an 

irreducible  fraction  ;  so  that  we  have  an  entire  quantity  equal  to  an  irre- 
ducible fraction,  which  is  absurd. 


MATHEMATICS    NOT    ULTIMATELY    EXACT. 


277 


conceptions.  That  a  curve  shall  continue  to  approach  a  line 
and  never  reach  it,  is  the  characteristic  of  all  asymptotes.  This 
contradiction  can  be  made  obvious  without  the  aid  of  mathe- 
matical analysis  ;  and  there  are  so  many  people  who  declare 
that  they  will  not  believe  what  is  contradictory,  that  it  may 
not  be  amiss  to  insert  it. 

Imagine  a  bit  of  cardboard,  rather  large,  set  up  vertically,  as 
shown  in  this  figure. 


Let  there  be  two  holes,  one  near  the  upper  and  the  other 
the  lower  edge.  Pass  cords  through  these  holes  and  unite  the 
ends  on  the  right  as  at  A.  From  this  point  A  mark  a  point 
on  each  cord,  b  and  c,  exactly  at  the  same  distance  from  A. 
Now  keeping  the  cord  stretched,  let  the  point  A  move  to  the 
right,  always  at  the  same  distance  from  the  floor.  It  will  be 
seen  at  once  that  the  marked  points  b  and  c  must  continually 
approach  each  other  as  A  moves  to  the  right,  and  that  theo- 
retically they  never  can  come  quite  together;  so  that,  though 
the  two  points  approach  each  other  forever,  they  never  can 
meet.  A  horizontal  line  through  AA'  would  be  the  common 
asymptote  to  the  loci  of  the  two  moving  points. 

Again,  it  seems  plain  enough  to  common  sense  that  no  exact 
area  can  be  enclosed  so  long  as  the  bounding  lines  do  not 
absolutely  close  on  each  other;  and  yet,  the  mathematics 
presents  many  cases  in  which  areas  are  definitely  calculated, 


278 


MECHANISM    AND    PERSONALITY. 


though  the  limiting  lines  do  not,  and  never  can  meet.    Take 
as  an  example  the  Cissoid  of  Diodes.    The  curve  may  be 

described  by  points  as  follows  : 
Let  AB  be  the  diameter  of 
a  given  circle,  and  from  the 
extremity  A  of  the  diameter 
draw  a  straight  line  AC  to 
meet  the  tangent  line  at  the 
other  extremity,  and  mark  the 
point  Pat  a  distance  from  C 
equal  to  the  intercepted  cord 
AD.  Determine  any  number 
of  other  points  in  like  way  on 
other  lines  through  A  above 
and  below  the  diameter  AB. 
The  locus  of  all  the  points  so 
found  will  be  the  Cissoid.  It 
manifestly  has  two  infinite 
branches,  and  the  tangent  line 
will  be  a  common  asymptote. 
Now,  although  by  the  condi- 
tions, the  extremities  of  the 
two  branches  can  never  reach 
the  tangent,  nevertheless  it  is 
demonstrable  that  the  area  be- 
tween the  tangent  and  curves 
is  exactly  equal  to  three  times 
the  area  of  the  circle. 

The  following  is  a  still  more 
remarkable  case.  This  curve, 
whose  equation  is  given  in  the 
footnote  on  the  following  page, 
can  never  touch  the  axes  X 
and  Y,  or,  which  is  the  same  thing,  constantly  approaches  the 


MATHEMATICS    NOT    ULTIMATELY   EXACT. 


279 


axes  above  and  below,  and  reaches  them  at  infinity.1  The 
area  comprehended  between  the  curve  and  the  axis  of  Y 
above  the  line  CD  is  proved 
to  be  exactly  equal  to  the 
square  CDEO,  while  the 
area  of  the  portion  XEDB 
is  infinite.  Since  the  curve 
continually  approaches  the 
axis  of  X,  it  is  impossible 
to  see  why  it  does  not  as 
certainly  close  on  X,  as 
the  upper  end  does  on  Y\ 
or  how  the  excluded  por- 
tion of  the  plane  can  ever 
get  within,  so  as  to  enable 
the  area  to  be  infinite. 

But,  passing  over  innumerable  contradictions  which  show 
themselves  in  the  divers  'orders  of  contact,'  ( singular  solu- 
tions,' and  indeed  throughout  the  Infinitesimal  Calculus,  let  us 
take  a  case  of  dire  contradiction,  as,  for  example,  the  propo- 
sition that  two  straight  lines  in  the  same  plane  and  inclined  to 


1  The  equation  of  the  above  curve  is  y2  =  — 
Differentiating,  we  have  dx  =  --  %  ,  whence 

^3 

C2dy      2 

S  =  —   I    -  f-  =  -  +  £•. 

J    f       y 
Estimating  the  area  from  the  axis  of  Y,  giving  y  —  oo,  we  have 


oo  y 

Making  y=i  =  DE,  we  have  s"  =  2  =  ADEOY;  that  is,  twice  the 
square  CDEO.  Taking  the  area  between  the  limits  y—i  and^  =  o,  we 
have 

Area  BDEX=  -  -  2  =  ex. 
o 


28O  MECHANISM    AND    PERSONALITY. 

each  other,  do,  and  do  not,  intersect  in  a  point.  Take  two 
lines,  given  by  their  equations,  such  that  upon  combining,  the 
co-ordinates  of  their  common  point  prove  to  be  surds.  Now, 
as  we  have  seen,  exact  values  for  these  co-ordinates  are  impos- 
sible, and  therefore  there  cannot  be  a  definite  point  which 
answers  to  them  ;  and  since  the  lines  must  intersect  in  an  exact 
point,  they  cannot  logically  intersect  at  all. 

This  is  all  fine  spun,  of  course,  but  it  shows  that  the  difficul- 
ties of  thought  which  show  themselves  in  studying  the  compo- 
sition of  matter,  time,  space,  cause,  and  in  the  whole  domain 
of  metaphysic,  discover  themselves  also  in  mathematics,  — 
that  while  in  this  science  exactness  is  the  rule,  absolute  deter- 
minism cannot  be  predicated  of  the  exactest  of  all  the  exact 
sciences. 

These  difficulties  no  more  shake  the  foundations  of  mathe- 
matics than  the  insoluble  contradictions  in  metaphysic  disturb 
the  current  of  every-day  thinking  ;  but  they  do  show  that  logic, 
even  in  its  purest  form,  is  not  an  infallible  instrument,  but  has 
its  '  little  rifts '  which  only  the  more  surely  bespeak  it  kin  to 
the  universe  of  mystery.  One  of  the  great  evils  of  the  day  is 
that  a  large,  and  that  a  vigorous-minded,  class  of  men,  have 
undertaken  to  smooth  out  the  folds  in  the  world's  vesture,  and, 
with  the  rush  and  whirl  of  an  unbalanced  science,  trample  out 
of  the  heart  of  man  all  sense  of  wonder  —  all  thought  of  the 
Ineffable  which  moves  him  to  be  silent  and  adore. 

Before  leaving  this  subject,  it  will  be  well  to  consider  for  a 
moment  how  the  '  infinite  '  is  to  be  construed.  The  word  is 
used  very  loosely  on  all  hands,  but  even  in  a  technical  and  sci- 
entific sense  there  is  often  confusion  of  thought. 

To  most  minds  infinity  means  something  very  great,  either 
in  length,  or  volume,  or  power,  or  minuteness,  but  still  carrying 
with  it  some  unit  of  comparison  by  which  to  estimate  it  While 
in  a  popular  way  the  word  serves  a  good  purpose  in  this  sense, 
this  meaning  cannot  be  allowed  from  a  scientific  point  of  view. 


MATHEMATICS    NOT    ULTIMATELY    EXACT.  28 1 

The  infinite  is  not  a  huge  finite ;  indeed,  it  is  just  what  the 
finite  is  not.  It  is  therefore  a  great  mistake  to  suppose  that 
one  can  follow  (say)  a  line  on  and  on,  and  so  arrive  at  infinity. 
The  infinite  absolutely  refuses  to  be  composed  or  made  up  by 
adding  more  and  more,  or  by  any  process  of  reduplication. 
It  cannot  be  approached —  it  is  only  to  be  reached  —  (if  that 
word  can  be  used  at  all  in  this  sense)  — per  saltum  ;  and  the 
leap  is  just  as  great  last  as  first.  For  example,  suppose  we  take 
the  distance  to  the  remotest  fixed  star  as  a  unit  —  a  distance 
(say)  requiring  light  a  thousand  years  (or  any  other  number  one 
likes)  to  travel ;  and  suppose  that  every  millionth  of  an  inch  in 
it  were  suddenly  expanded  into  a  length  equal  to  the  whole, 
and  all  strung  out  together,  it  would  still  be  just  as  far  from 
infinite  length  as  any  one  of  those  unexpanded  fractions.  Not 
the  most  infinitesimal  step  has  been  taken  to  pass  a  chasm 
which  is  not  even  reached  until  the  finite  has  ceased  to  be. 
The  infinite  differs  from  the  finite,  not  in  degree,  but  in  kind. 
It  is  '  other  '  to  it,  and  in  final  analysis  cannot  be  permitted  to 
retain  the  remotest  likeness. 

This  may  be  illustrated  very  simply  by  the  tangential  func- 
tion of  an  arc.  The  tangent  grows  at  first  *with  moderate 
slowness  from  the  origin,  but  with  constantly  increasing  strides 
for  equal  increments  of  arc,  until,  when  the  arc  approaches  90°, 
the  length  of  the  strides  becomes  each  inconceivably  greater 
than  the  last  —  greater  than  all  the  distance  travelled  from  the 
origin  —  until,  when  the  secant  becomes  nearly  perpendicular 
to  the  initial  diameter,  the  mind  sinks  under  the  overpowering 
sense  of  immensity;  but  the  arc  is  not  yet  90°,  —  the  mad 
flight  goes  on,  and  it  is  not  until  the  last  minutest  difference 
of  a  difference  of  arc  is  passed  —  itself  an  impossible  concep- 
tion, —  not  until  the  secant  lets  go  its  touch  upon  the  tangent 
line  and  becomes  parallel  to  it,  that  the  function  suddenly  leaps 
the  chasm  which  separates  it  from  all  finite  values  behind,  and 
is  —  not  becomes  —  infinite.  It  is  not  that  in  the  last  infinites!- 


282  MECHANISM    AND    PERSONALITY. 

mal  of  arc  added,  there  is  added  to  the  stupendous  length 
already  gained  by  the  tangent,  enough  to  make  it  infinite,  — 
for  all  that  is  zero  in  the  presence  of  infinity,  —  but  that  a 
world-wide  change  has  taken  place,  and  it  has  ceased  to  be 
what  it  was  —  the  finite  —  and  become  what  it  was  not  —  the 
infinite.  If  one  rightly  takes  this  in,  one  gains  some  faint 
notion  of  the  incommensurable  character  of  the  infinite ;  and 
yet,  there  is  no  point  in  the  whole  movement  in  which  the 
same  incompatibility  of  thought  does  not  present  itself.  It  is 
the  same  marvellous  truth  which  has  met  us  all  along  our  way 
—  the  passage  from  the  finite  to  the  infinite  and  back  again  — 
phenomenon  of  change  in  any  sort  —  incomprehensible  in 
thought,  and  yet  ever  taking  place  in  fact. 


THE    METAPHYSICAL   ATTITUDE   OF    CHANGE.        283 


CHAPTER  XXVI. 

THE  METAPHYSICAL   ATTITUDE   OF   CHANGE.      CAUSE. 

The  problem  of  Change.  Quotation  from  Plato.  The  problem  of 
Causation.  Influence  '  passing  over.'  Doctrine  of  '  Occasionalism.'  '  Pre- 
established  Harmony.'  '  Divine  Assistance.'  Lotze  quoted.  Causation,  as 
such,  inexplicable. 

WE  go  on  to  show  the  incompatibilities  of  thought  which 
discover  themselves  in  the  conception  of  '  change,' 
of  ' motion,'  and  of  'cause.'  Changes  are  so  natural  and  so 
necessary  that  it  seems  to  most  minds  a  mere  impertinence  to 
inquire  what  '  change '  is.  In  practical  life  there  is  no  need 
to  ask  such  a  question.  Everybody  knows  what  is  meant,  so 
long  as  no  explanation  is  required,  and  this  practical  knowledge 
would  do  perfectly  well  if  one  could  keep  the  question  out  of 
mind.  But  that  is  impossible,  at  least  for  those  who  are  not 
content  with  the  mere  l  bread-and-butter '  side  of  existence. 
The  question  is  asked,  and  has  been  asked  as  far  back  as  the 
dawn  of  speculative  thought ;  and  it  still  waits  such  an  answer 
as  shall  carry  conviction  to  those  who  rightly  take  in  the 
difficulty. 

The  problem  now  is  not,  How  can  change  be?  for  that 
would  simply  throw  us  back  upon  the  question  which  lies  be- 
hind all  inquiries  —  How  can  anything  be  ?  The  question  is, 
How  can  we  account  for  the  mutations  we  see  going  on,  so  as 
to  make  "  the  total  idea  of  it  without  contradictions,  and  ade- 
quate to  those  facts  of  experience 
by  means  of  it"? 


284  MECHANISM    AND    PERSONALITY. 

Take,  for  example,  a  body  at  rest :  How  can  it  become  a 
body  in  motion?  Being  at  rest,  and  having  no  motion,  by 
hypothesis,  in  moving,  must  it  not  move  while  it  is  at  rest  ?  It 
cannot  wait  until  it  has  motion  to  move,  since  it  would  in  that 
case  wait  forever.  It  must  have  motion,  then,  while  it  has  it 
not,  —  a  contradiction  sufficiently  glaring.  The  same  is  true 
of  a  body  in  motion :  How  can  it  ever  come  to  rest  ?  It 
cannot  be  at  rest  so  long  as  it  is  moving ;  that  is,  up  to,  and 
into  the  point  just  before  that  at  which  it  is  to  rest ;  and  from 
this,  it  must  move  to  the  next  and  last.  It  must  carry  its 
motion,  then,  to  the  very  end,  and  motion  and  rest  again  come 
together.  The  difficulty  is  the  same  at  any  point  of  its  path 
where  there  is  a  change  of  velocity.  Since  the  velocity  changes, 
the  change  must  be  at  some  point,  and  the  body  must  arrive 
at  the  point  with  one  velocity,  and  leave  it  with  another ;  that 
is,  have  two  velocities  at  the  same  time  and  at  the  same 
point. 

The  infinite  variety  of  forms  in  which  this  difficulty  of 
thought  can  be  thrown  may  be  seen  most  thoroughly  and 
beautifully  in  the  Dialogues  of  Plato.  I  quote  a  few  sentences 
from  the  "Parmenides"  (Jowett),  which  is  taken  up  with  the 
discussion  of  the  '  One  and  the  Many.' 

"  Further  consider,  whether  that  which  is  of  such  a  nature  can 
have  either  rest  or  motion. 

"Why  not? 

"Why,  because  motion  is  either  motion  in  a  place  or  change 
in  self;  these  are  the  only  kinds  of  motion 

"Yes. 

"  And  the  one,  when  changed  in  itself,  cannot  possibly  be 
any  longer  one. 

"  It  cannot. 

"  And  therefore  cannot  experience  this  sort  of  motion  ? 

"  Certainly  not. 

"  Can  the  motion  of  one,  then,  be  in  place  ? 


THE    METAPHYSICAL    ATTITUDE    OF    CHANGE.        285 

"  Perhaps. 

"  But  if  one  moved  in  place,  must  it  not  either  move  round 
and  round  in  the  same  place,  or  from  one  place  to  another? 

"  Certainly. 

"  And  that  which  moves  round  and  round  in  the  same  place 
must  go  round  upon  a  centre ;  and  that  which  goes  round  upon 
a  centre  must  have  other  parts  which  move  round  the  centre ; 
but  that  which  has  no  centre  and  no  parts  cannot  possibly  be 
carried  round  upon  a  centre  ? 

"  Impossible. 

"  But  perhaps  the  motion  of  the  one  consists  in  going  from 
one  place  to  another? 

"  Perhaps  so,  if  it  moves  at  all. 

"  And  have  we  not  already  shown  that  one  cannot  be  in  any- 
thing ? 

"Yes. 

"  And  still  greater  is  the  impossibility  of  one  coming  into 
being  in  anything? 

"  I  do  not  see  how  that  is. 

"  Why,  because  anything  which  comes  into  being  in  anything, 
cannot  as  yet  be  in  that  other  thing,  while  still  coming  into 
being,  nor  remain  entirely  out  of  it,  if  already  coming  into 
being  in  it. 

"  Certainly. 

"  And,  therefore,  whatever  comes  into  being  in  another  must 
have  parts,  and  the  one  part  may  be  in  that  other,  and  the 
other  part  out  of  it ;  but  that  which  has  no  parts  cannot  possi- 
bly be  at  the  same  time  a  whole,  which  is  either  within  or 
without  anything." 

This  is  not  a  mere  juggle  of  words,  as  one  might  be  at  first 
tempted  to  declare.  It  is  a  difficulty  of  thought  which  we 
have  so  often  encountered,  and  shall  be  thrown  back  upon  con- 
stantly as  we  proceed.  It  is  of  the  same  nature  as  the  diffi- 
culty which  the  physicists  find  in  the  construction  of  matter ; 


286  MECHANISM   AND    PERSONALITY. 

and  discovers  itself  whenever  thought  attempts  to  transcend 
the  sphere  of  relation,  and  deal  with  the  ultimate  in  any 
direction. 

Granting,  what  we  can  neither  deny  nor  explain,  that  change 
is  an  actual  factor  in  the  economy  of  nature,  the  further  in- 
quiry arises,  How  does  change  come  about  ?  The  two  ques- 
tions are  clearly  separable  :  one  is  of  the  '  What,'  and  the 
other  is  of  the  '  How.'  One  thing  acts  upon  another.  We 
see  the  change  which  takes  place,  and,  passing  the  question  as 
to  what  the  essential  difference  is  between  the  new  and  old 
order  of  states  or  conditions,  we  want  to  know  now  in  what  way 
one  thing  acts  upon  another  to  produce  the  new.  This  is  the 
problem  of  '  cause,'  of  which  we  have  already  had  somewhat  to 
say,  but  which  requires  some  further  consideration.  We  shall 
follow  Lotze  in  our  outline. 

In  the  first  place,  the  proposition,  Everything  has  a  cause,  is 
not  quite  correct.  In  mathematical  truth  we  do  not  seek  a 
cause.  When  we  say  a  triangle  has  three  sides,  we  can  give  no 
reason,  and  we  do  not  look  for  any.  Neither  do  we  look  for 
cause  in  the  actual,  so  long  as  it  simply  abides.  It  is  only 
when  change  takes  place,  or  is  conceived  to  be  happening,  that 
we  want  to  know  the  reason.  "  The  '  Being '  of  an  existence 
can  in  itself  be  regarded  as  perfectly  unconditioned  and  eter- 
nal. It  is  only  the  special  nature  of  what  exists  that  can,  on 
manifold  other  grounds,  excite  a  doubt  respecting  its  uncon- 
ditioned existence  and  inquiry  after  its  origin.  Even  such  an 
investigation,  however,  must  terminate  in  the  recognition  of 
some  unconditioned  being  or  other." 

In  an  effect,  we  may  distinguish  the  content  and  the  actual- 
ization. The  '  content '  is  that  which  distinguishes  the  event 
from  other  events,  as  when  a  spark  is  applied  to  gunpowder, 
the  effect  is  known  to  be  an  explosion  instead  of  (say)  a  change 
of  color  or  a  change  of  substance.  The  '  actualization '  is  the 
happening  or  act  of  changing  without  regard  to  the  particular 


THE    METAPHYSICAL    ATTITUDE    OF    CHANGE.        28/ 

result  after  the  change  is  complete.    The  difficulty  lies  chiefly 
in  the  actualization ;  how  does  one  thing  act  on  another  ? 

The  common  answer  is  that  an  '  influence  .  .  .  passes  over ' 
from  one  element  to  the  other  (causa  transient,  influxus  phy- 
sicus),  and  produces  the  effect.  This  seems  to  have  a  mean- 
ing at  first  look,  but  upon  examination  it  will  be  found  quite 
empty. 

In  the  first  place,  what  is  it  that  passes  over?  If  we  think 
of  it  as  something  real,  —  a  constituent  part  or  element,  c, 
which  separates  itself  from  A,  and,  moving  over,  unites  with  B, 
this  is  quite  comprehensible  as  a  fact,  but  it  is  not  what  is 
meant  by  '  cause  '  in  any  right  sense.  It  is  but  the  translation 
in  detail  of  A  to,  or  into,  B.  "  When  water  (c),  for  example, 
with  all  its  properties  passes  over  from  A  to  B,  the  only  effect 
is  that  those  properties  now  appear  at  the  place  B  (which 
becomes  moist),  and  vanish  at  the  place  A  (which  dries  off)." 

The  only  other  way  in  which  we  can  regard  this  passing  over 
is  that  something  not  real,  but  belonging  to  A  as  a  potency, 
attribute,  or  condition,  shall  proceed  out  of  the  thing  which 
affects,  to  the  thing  affected ;  but  such  a  potency,  whether  it 
be  called  '  state,'  '  influence,'  '  efficiency,'  '  force,'  or  what  not, 
so  long  as  it  is  not  a  part  or  constituent  of  A,  is  but  an  attri- 
bute and  cannot  exist  apart  from,  and  independent  of,  its  sub- 
ject. A  '  state '  and  the  like  can  never  be  set  loose  from  the 
1  thing '  A  so  as  to  exist  by  itself  for  an  instant  between  A  and 
B,  unsupported  by  a  subject,  and  then  attach  itself  to  B.  In 
other  words,  there  is  a  gulf  fixed  between  cause  and  effect, 
narrow  as  it  may  seem,  across  which  no  mere  force  or  influence 
—  nothing  —  can  pass  which  is  not  itself  '  thing  ' ;  and  if  it 
be  '  thing '  we  have  a  mere,  translation,  and  no  true  effect. 

But  even  if  it  could  be  made  comprehensible  how  this  gulf 
could  be  passed,  this  would  but  bring  the  compelling  power 
near  to,  or  against,  the  thing  to  be  moved ;  and  the  real  ques- 
tion then  emerges,  Why  is  the  vicinity  of  this  something  to  the 


288  MECHANISM   AND    PERSONALITY. 

thing  to  be  moved  of  such  importance  to  it  that  it  must  move  ? 
That  is,  What  causes  the  thing  B  to  move  ?  We  have  not  really 
advanced  a  step.  The  causal  nexus  is  as  entirely  undiscover- 
able  as  at  the  first. 

This  is  a  point  which  most  minds  do  not  apprehend  readily. 
Let  us  take  an  illustration. 

A  push  or  pull  on  a  rod  is  communicated  from  one  end  to 
the  other.  The  molecular  springs  in  the  first  film  moved  react 
upon  those  of  the  next,  and  so  on  to  the  end.  Now  it  is  easy 
enough  to  say  that  the  second  and  consecutive  films  must 
move,  but  this  is  just  the  question :  Why  must  they  move  ?  If 
one  says,  "  Because  they  must,"  the  answer  is  safe,  and  in  reality 
there  is  no  other  to  make ;  but  this  is  a  surrender  of  the  point. 
It  is  not  at  all  like  a  conclusion  which  follows  apodictically 
from  logical  premises,  for  there  the  contradictory  is  unthink- 
able. In  this  case  it  is  not  at  all  so.  Here  the  conclusion  is 
clearly  based  upon  experience.  If  one  body,  in  impinging  upon 
another,  had  not  constantly  produced  before  our  eyes  this 
resultant  change  in  the  body  struck,  there  would  be  no  expec- 
tation of  a  change  in  consequence  of  the  collision ;  and  as  it  is, 
we  can  without  difficulty  conceive  of  such  a  sudden  alteration 
in  the  physical  character  of  bodies  that  no  such  result  would 
take  place.  That  we  cannot  do  in  the  case  of  a  necessary 
deduction  in  a  logical  process,  unless  we  conceive  of  a  change, 
not  in  the  subject-matter  but  in  the  powers  of  thinking.  There 
is  thus  a  manifest  difference. 

All  this  has  been  so  clearly  seen  by  the  great  thinkers  of  the 
world  that  a  number  of  schemes  have  been  proposed  to  escape 
the  difficulty.  Let  us  look  at  some  of  them  very  briefly. 

First,  the  Cartesian  doctrine  of  Occasionalism,  as  developed 
especially  by  Guelincx,  had  for  its  especial  object  to  explain 
how  mind  and  matter  act  and  react  upon  each  other  under  the 
dualistic  postulate  of  Descartes,  that  mind  and  matter  are 
totally  unlike,  —  as  much  so  as  if  they  belonged  to  wholly 


THE    METAPHYSICAL   ATTITUDE    OF    CHANGE.        289 

different  worlds.  It  proposed  to  abandon  all  thought  of  the 
direct  action  of  one  thing  on  another,  and  to  consider  the 
world,  in  its  succession  of  events,  as  utterly  unconnected  by 
any  causal  nexus,  holding  all  antecedent  states  or  conditions 
to  be  but  the  occasions  or  signals  upon  which  the  effects  follow ; 
the  true  compelling  cause  residing  in  Deity. 

Manifestly  the  difficulty  is  not  thus  removed,  but  recurs  in  a 
new  form,  weighted  down  with  other  difficulties  of  its  own. 
The  question  now  is,  How  does  the  thing  affected  know,  and 
how  is  it  made  to  respond  to,  the  signal  given?  The  answer 
is  as  impossible  as  in  the  case  of  a  supposed  influence  '  passing 
over.'  Its  own  difficulties  are  that  it  is  contrary  to  the  convic- 
tions of  experience,  and  introduces  all  manner  of  unrealities 
for  what  at  least  seems  natural. 

A  second  theory  is  what  is  known  as  '  Pre-established  Har- 
mony.' This  theory,  invented  by  Leibnitz,  assumes  that  the 
entire  world,  spiritual  and  physical,  down  to  the  minutest 
details,  was  pre-arranged  by  the  Author  of  Creation,  so  that  each 
and  every  event  follows  its  precedent  so-called  cause  with  un- 
failing certainty  —  not  because  there  is  any  dependence  one 
on  the  other,  but  because  they  were  so  arranged  as  to  happen 
in  an  established  sequence.  Thus,  when  one  wills  to  raise 
one's  arm,  the  muscles  and  the  whole  physical  organism  are 
moved,  not  by  the  will  or  any  self- energy,  but  because  it  was 
so  ordered  that  upon  the  particular  volition  happening,  that 
particular  movement  should  take  place. 

Even  granting  that  the  world  was  so  ordered  in  the  begin- 
ning, when  God  withdraws  himself  from  his  work,  what  guar- 
antee is  there  that  the  order  so  established  will  continue  to 
subsist  ?  If  one  thing  does  not  act  upon  another,  what  would 
prevent  the  whole  from  falling  into  confusion ;  and  how  do 
we  know  that  the  world  is  going  on  as  pre-arranged  ?  It  will 
be  seen  that  the  difficulty  is  not  in  the  least  avoided,  but 
really  made  worse.  There  must  be  something  constraining 


2QO  MECHANISM    AND    PERSONALITY. 

and  compelling  the  orderly  continuance  of  events,  and  this  is 
the  old  question  back  again,  with  its  own  difficulties  added. 
The  famous  illustration  of  the  clocks,  so  constructed  as  to  run 
exactly  together,  but  without  any  possible  connection  or  influ- 
ence on  each  other,  does  not  meet  the  case ;  for  after  the 
clocks  are  made  and  placed  in  perfect  accord  of  movement, 
how  shall  either  of  them  continue  to  carry  out  the  purpose  of 
the  mechanician,  if  one  wheel  does  not  act  upon  and  compel 
the  movement  of  another?  Thus  the  old  difficulty  steals  back 
upon  us. 

Another  form  of  the  same  theory  presents  the  case,  not  as  a 
fixed  and  previously  determined  order,  but  introduces  a  hypo- 
thetical element ;  God  has  not  ordered  all  things  absolutely  in 
advance,  but  has  established  a  provisional  order,  such  that  if 
a  certain  a  comes  to  pass,  a  certain  b  will  follow.  This  theory 
fails  in  the  same  manner  as  the  categorical  form  just  consid- 
ered ;  for  if  a  certain  '  thing,'  n,  is  compelled  to  pass  into  a 
certain  state  or  condition,  a,  whenever  another  state  or  condi- 
tion, b,  happens  to  a  second  thing,  ;;/,  then  the  n  must  take 
some  notice  of  m's  being  present,  and  affected  by  ^,  before  it 
can  pass  into  the  state  a.  The  notion  of  causation  is  not 
escaped,  since  either  m  or  b  must  have  an  effect  upon  n. 

Still  another  form  of  the  same  general  doctrine  devised  by 
the  followers  of  Descartes,  is  called  the  theory  of  'Divine 
Assistance  ' ;  and  the  especial  point  is,  that  while  one  thing 
cannot  be  the  efficient  cause  of  another,  God  by  his  own  power 
compels  the  proper  reaction  which  answers  to  the  action. 
Even  this  theory  does  not  get  rid  of  the  notion  of  causation, 
but  contains  it  twice  over.  For,  in  order  that  God,  in  the 
light  of  our  thought,  may  attach  to  every  a  its  b,  and  to  every 
c  its  d,  it  is  necessary,  first,  that  the  presence  of  a  or  c  shall 
have  some  effect  on  the  Divine  mind,  and  that  the  effect  of 
one  shall  be  different  from  that  of  the  other ;  and  second,  it 
is  necessary  that  God,  in  the  order  of  his  own  laws,  shall  react 


THE    METAPHYSICAL    ATTITUDE    OF    CHANGE.        2QI 

upon  the  things  in  question ;  and  so  produce  one  effect  in  con- 
sequence of  #,  and  another  in  response  to  b. 

Lotze  says,  in  summing  up  the  results  of  the  discussion  of 
cause  :  "  The  conception  of  efficient  Causation  is  inevitable  for 
our  apprehension  of  the  World,  and  all  attempts  to  deny  the 
necessity  of  efficient  Causation,  and  then  still  comprehend  the 
course  of  the  World,  make  shipwreck  of  themselves.  But  just 
as  certain  is  it  that  the  nature  of  efficient  Causation  is  inex- 
plicable ;  that  is  to  say,  it  can  never  be  shown  in  what  way 
Causation  in  general  is  produced  or  comes  to  pass  ;  on  the  con- 
trary, all  that  can  ever  be  shown  is,  what  preparatory  condi- 
tions, what  relations  between  the  real  beings,  must  in  every 
case  be  given,  in  order  that  this  perpetually  incomprehensible 
act  of  Causation  may  take  place. 

"That  the  inquiry  into  the  ' bringing-to-pass '  of  efficient 
Causation  is  necessarily  unanswerable,  and  in  its  very  nature 
senseless,  is  shown  by  the  circulus  into  which  it  straightway 
leads.  For,  if  we  want  to  get  an  insight  into  the  causative 
process  of  Causation  itself,  we  naturally  take  for  granted,  as 
something  necessarily  familiar,  the  causal  efficiency  of  that 
very  cause  which  is  assumed  to  produce  the  Causation  to  be 
explained ;  we  are  therefore  explaining  efficient  Causation  by 
itself." 

This  does  not  in  any  wise  affect  our  general  conception  of 
causation,  and  we  must  go  on  thinking  of  force  or  influence 
'  passing  over '  from  one  thing  to  another  to  produce  effects. 
In  this  regard,  causation  is  in  no  worse  case  than  matter  or 
mind,  since  we  do  not  know  what  either  mind  or  matter  is. 
They  are  to  us  concepts,  the  actual  content  of  which  vary  no 
doubt  considerably  for  different  persons. 

It  seems  clear,  however,  that  the  assumption  of  independence 
or  absolute  separateness  of  '  things  '  must  be  abandoned.  All 
efforts  to  bring  isolated  things  into  relation,  once  assuming 
them  to  be  out,  must  utterly  fail.  In  the  case  of  a  being  A, 


MECHANISM    AND    PERSONALITY. 

affecting  another,  B,  any  state  a  which  takes  place  in  A,  must 
for  the  very  reason  that  it  is  in  A  be  an  '  affection '  in  B  ;  but  it 
does  not  necessarily  become  such  an  affection  of  B  by  means  of 
an  influence  issuing  from  A. 

"  The  foregoing  requirements  can  be  met  only  by  the  assump- 
tion that  all  individual  things  are  substantially  one ;  that  is  to 
say,  they  do  not  merely  become  combined  subsequently  by  all 
manner  of  relations,  each  individual  having  previously  been 
present  as  an  independent  existence  ;  but  from  the  very  begin- 
ning onward  they  are  only  different  modifications  of  one  indi- 
vidual Being,  which  we  propose  to  designate  provisionally  by 
the  title  of  the  Infinite,  of  the  Absolute  =  M" 

The  formal  consequences  of  this  assumption,  Lotze  goes  on 
to  say  in  substance,  are  as  follows  :  Any  particular  '  thing,'  a,  is 
but  a  special  mode  of  the  universal  M,  and  any  other  definite 
thing,  B,  is  another  mode  of  AT,  etc.  Every  state  which  takes 
place  in  a  is  but  a  further  differentiation  of  the  0-mode  of  M 
and  is  therefore  a  state  of  M.  From  the  nature  of  its  own 
laws  this  modification  must  show  itself  in  M9  and  it  accordingly 
produces  a  further  differentiation  in  some  mode  of  M,  say  the 
<£-mode.  This  modification  thus  appearing  in  b,  seems  to  be 
and  is  the  same  thing  as  a  acting  on  b. 

Efficient  Causation,  therefore,  is  a  necessary  concept,  and 
has  no  actual  content;  but,  in  an  ultimate  sense  it  is  the 
Absolute  itself;  and  the  actuality  is  the  result  of  self-activity 
somehow  and  somewhere.  We  can  say  one  thing  really  acts 
upon  another,  provided  we  do  not  interpret  the  word  '  really ' 
to  mean  more  than  the  word  '  real '  can  mean  when  we  say  a 
'  thing '  is  real.  We  find  here,  as  we  have  found  before,  and 
shall  always  find,  that  the  ultimate  in  any  case  is  known ;  but 
not  by  the  understanding  in  its  technical  sense  which  always 
implies  the  relation  of  subject  and  predicate ;  but  by  that  form 
of  knowing  which  comes  to  us  at  first  hand  in  the  form  of 
rational  intuitions,  and  without  which  the  understanding  could 


THE  METAPHYSICAL  ATTITUDE  OF  CHANGE.    293 

have  no  ground.  In  referring  it  back  to  the  One  Infinite 
Being,  the  purpose  is  not  to  offer  any  theory  of  explanation  of 
causation,  as  such ;  since  '  the  manner '  in  which  it  comes  to 
pass,  that  even  within  the  One  Infinite  Being,  one  state  brings 
about  another,  remains  still  wholly  unexplained ;  and  on  this 
point  we  must  not  deceive  ourselves.  How  it  is  in  general  that 
'  Causal  action  '  is  produced,  is  as  impossible  to  tell  as  how 
'  Being '  is  made.  And  yet,  as  a  primordial  fact,  we  know  it 
certainly  and  in  the  same  way  as  we  know  that  we  are  what 
we  are. 


2Q4  MECHANISM    AND    PERSONALITY. 


CHAPTER  XXVII. 

RELATION    OF   PERSONALITY   TO    SPACE   AND   TIME,    MASS   AND 
MOTION. 

The  concepts  '  Space  '  and  '  Time.'  Subjective  ground  of  Mass  and 
Motion.  Not  self-subsisting  realities.  Find  their  reality  in  Personality. 
Reality  of  the  cosmos  personal.  Soundness  of  scientific  methods.  No 
truth  material.  Personality  necessary  to  truth.  Personality  not  a  phe- 
nomenon. 

IT  is  not  to  be  questioned  that  we  have  a  necessary  intuition  of 
space,  but  it  is  seriously  questioned  as  to  whether  space  is  an 
objective  entity  or  not;  that  is,  as  to  whether  it  belongs  to  the 
thing-world,  or  to  the  spirit-world.  It  can  make  small  claim  to 
be  'thing,'  since  it  is  incapable  of  affecting  the  sensibilities,  or 
of  being  itself  affected  by  anything  whatever.  The  necessary 
condition  of  pure  space  is  that  it  shall  be  empty,  and  therefore 
no-thing.  It  cannot  even  be  permitted  to  enjoy  the  property 
or  capacity  of  being  a  containing  somewhat,  though  this  is  a 
firmly  established  prejudice,  arising  from  our  uniform  experience 
of  vessels,  and  other  receptacles,  for,  upon  removing  the  limiting 
surfaces,  the  notion  falls  away.  This,  however,  does  not  at  all 
affect  our  notion  of  distances  from  point  to  point  in  bodies,  or 
between  bodies,  that  is,  of  the  trinal  dimensions  of  extension ; 
but  these  are  clearly  relations,  and  not  entities.  All  possible 
objects  must  carry  with  them  the  notion  of  extension ;  so  that 
the  space-form  must  discover  itself  in  any  object.  Whenever 
we  think  of  air,  or  ether,  or  aught  else  of  a  dimensional  char- 
acter, we  must  have  the  notion  of  space ;  and  there  will  always 
be  lurking  in  the  mind  some  '  thing '  in  the  content  of  the  space- 
concept.  We  cannot  think  of  space  as  a  prius,  existing  inde- 


RELATION    OF    PERSONALITY   TO    SPACE,    ETC. 

pendently,  and  of  things  as  afterwards  made  to  fill  it.  As 
Lotze  expresses  it,  things  do  not  exist  in  space,  but  space 
exists  in  things. 

In  like  way  time  has  none  of  the  characteristics  of  body,  but 
is  a  presupposition  of  movement  and  change.  Of  eventless, 
empty  time  we  can  form  no  conception  whatever ;  but  just  as 
body  carries  with  it  the  necessary  notion  of  extension,  so  move- 
ment carries  with  it  the  intuition  of  duration.  Space  is  statical ; 
time  dynamical.  Space  is  the  ground  and  presupposition  of 
mass,  and  time  the  condition  and  presupposition  of  motion,  — 
the  two  fundamental  postulates  of  mechanics,  —  and  they  both 
belong  to  the  psychical  side  of  personality. 

With  regard  to  Motion,  we  have  the  same  sort  of  difficulties. 
What  is  Motion  ?  An  old  Greek,  it  is  said,  was  once  asked  this 
question  by  his  scholars ;  he  strode  across  the  floor,  and  ex- 
claimed, "  There  !  you  see  it,  but  what  it  is  I  do  not  know."  He 
was  in  no  worse  case  than  all  the  learned  world  has  been  in 
ever  since.  Ordinarily  we  accept  what  the  old  philosopher 
displayed  to  his  scholars  as  motion,  namely,  '  change  of  place,' 
with  respect  to  other  things  which  appear  fixed  — (  relative 
motion.'  This  is  comprehensible  enough  until  we  begin  to 
ask  what  a  fixed  point  is,  and  then  we  are  thrown  back  upon 
the  negation  of  motion  for  an  answer.  The  circle  is  narrow 
enough  —  a  point  at  rest  is  one  not  in  motion ;  a  point  in 
motion  is  one  not  at  rest ;  but  this  does  not  tell  us  what  rest 
is,  nor  what  motion  is.  The  question  is  not,  what  is  a  moving 
object?  but  what  is  motion  which  we  are  made  conscious  of 
in  the  object?  If  it  be  replied  that  motion  is  only  object 
in  motion,  then  it  follows  that  there  is  no  such  thing  as  motion 
perse ;  because  it  is  not,  when  the  object  is  at  rest,  and  is  in 
varying  degrees  as  the  body  moves  under  an  accelerating 
energy,  gaining  motion  at  every  point,  losing  it  under  a  retar- 
dation, until  all  is  lost,  and  it  is  again  at  rest.  It  is  thus  a 
quality,  a  state,  a  condition,  a  phenomenon  of  body,  but  in- 


2Q6  MECHANISM    AND    PERSONALITY. 

capable  of  independent,  self-subsisting  existence.  One  but 
deludes  oneself  in  thinking  that  one  has  any  conception 
of  motion,  except  as  a  somewhat  moving.  It  is,  therefore, 
incapacitated  from  taking  rank  in  thought  as  an  eternal,  self- 
subsisting  reality  in  its  own  right. 

Of  Mass,  we  have  seen  all  along  in  speaking  of  it,  that  it 
finds  its  essence  in  pure  resistance,  i.e.  inertia.  But  resistance 
is  a  negation,  and  from  this  fact  alone,  if  from  no  other,  Mass 
is  also  disqualified  for  an  independent,  self-subsisting  existence. 
And  yet  it  is  the  one,  and  the  only  one,  ultimate  property  or 
potency  of  matter.  Helmholtz's  and  Thompson's  'perfect 
fluid  '  must  have  it,  and  so  also  Le  Sage's  '  ultra-mundane  cor- 
puscules ' ;  but  to  have  it,  is  a  very  different  thing  from  to  be  it. 

Mass  and  motion  thus  having  no  right  to  an  independent, 
self-subsisting  existence,  it  follows  that  mechanics,  and  with  it 
the  whole  round  of  science,  is  compelled  to  find  its  ultimate 
ground  in  the  psychical  side  of  personality.  This  is  in  no  wise 
to  discredit  science,  or  its  methods ;  and  it  is  only  just  to  say 
that  the  leaders  of  science  clearly  see,  and  freely  admit,  the 
position.  As  Professor  Huxley  points  out,  physical  science  must 
recognize  its  obligations  to  metaphysic,  and  metaphysic,  on  the 
other  hand,  has  no  right  —  indeed  has  no  power  to  speak  intel- 
ligently except  in  the  fullest  recognition  of  the  province  and 
functions  of  physical  research.  These  two  phases  of  reality 
stand  towards  each  other  much  as  the  mechanical  and  psychi- 
cal factors  stand  toward  each  other  in  personality,  —  neither 
being  able  to  dispense  with  the  other,  though  the  psychical 
mode  claims,  and  must  always  be  granted  to  have,  the  domi- 
nance. Perhaps  the  radical  mistake  which  lies  at  the  bottom 
of  the  long-standing  antagonism  between  these  two  phases  of 
thought,  is  the  failure  to  recognize  the  fact,  that  neither  the 
mechanical  nor  the  psychical  mode  of  existence  can  claim  any 
exclusive  title  to  reality,  —  that  reality  as  Thing,  and  reality  as 
Thought,  are  both  equally  real,  neither  of  them  having  this  title 


RELATION    OF    PERSONALITY   TO    SPACE,    ETC. 

in  their  own  right,  but  both  actual,  as  having  their  ground  in 
the  One,  Infinite,  and  eternally  self-subsisting  Personality. 

At  the  risk  of  repeating,  let  us  look  at  this  a  little  further.  I 
am  not  conscious  of  my  bodily  existence  apart  from  and  inde- 
pendent of  my  psychical  activities,  and  I  am  not  conscious  of 
the  psychical  side  as  in  any  wise  independent  of  my  body.  I 
can  easily  emphasize  the  one  or  the  other,  and  so,  for  the  mo- 
ment, throw  out  of  account  the  neglected  factor;  but  the 
moment  I  attempt  to  examine  my  thought,  the  whole  self 
demands  recognition.  Thus  it  is,  that  neither  of  these  two 
necessary  factors  can  usurp  self-ness  or  personality.  They  are 
either  of  them  manifestations  of  '  me,'  and  by  no  possibility  can 
the  '  me '  evacuate  in  favor  of  either.  I  speak  of,  and  must 
speak  of  my  mind,  and  my  body,  and  so  inevitably  assume  the 
personal  subject  as  the  very  reality  to  which  they  both  belong, 
and  for  and  through  which  they  both  are  real. 

This  being  true  of  that  which  we  may  be  safely  assumed  to 
know  best —  body  and  spirit  (spirit  being  understood  as  synon- 
ymous with  all  that  goes  to  make  up  the  psychical  factor  of  the 
self) ,  and  these  two  factors  being  necessary,  constituent  actual- 
ities of  the  cosmos,  the  presumption  is  not  violent  that  what 
is  true  of  a  constituent  element,  is  true,  as  a  law,  of  the  whole. 

We  can  take  one  step  further  at  least.  No  one  will  dispute 
that  there  are  universal  truths  which  are  not  material,  or  per- 
haps better  stated,  that  no  truth  can  be  material.  No  one  can 
think  that  the  principles  of  mathematics  and  logic  are  what  is 
commonly  called  substance.  Further  than  this,  no  one  can 
deny  that  the  principle  of  vitality,  carrying  with  it  all  three  of 
the  fundamental  modes  of  personality,  is  exhibited  throughout 
Nature.  We  do,  therefore,  incontestably  see  both  the  mechani- 
cal and  spiritual  factors  everywhere  in  the  cosmos.  More  than 
this,  it  is  universally  conceded  that  there  must  be  an  ultimate 
existent,  which  is  the  ground  of  both  these  realities.  We  have, 
therefore,  in  the  cosmos  all  the  conditions  present,  and  it  only 


298  MECHANISM    AND    PERSONALITY. 

remains  to  call  this  '  Ultimate  Existent/  Person,  to  have  the 
Macrocosm  of  man  the  Microcosm. 

Again,  whether  the  external  world  is  what  it  seems  to  be,  or 
whether  it  is  at  all,  we  cannot  deny  that  it  at  least  persists  in 
seeming.  What  is  this  but  to  postulate  the  psychical  factor  of 
the  Existent  ?  Now,  if  we  have  to  take  leave  of  the  one  or  the 
other  of  these  factors,  without  doubt  we  shall  have  to  hold  fast 
to  the  psychical  factor,  and  let  the  material  go.  Thus  it  is  that 
we  must  concede  the  dominance  of  the  psychical  over  the 
mechanical  mode  ;  or,  if  one  or  the  other  must  be  All,  we  shall 
have  to  conclude  that  the  All  is  psychical. 

This  is  a  matter  of  so  much  consequence  that  I  venture  to 
put  it  once  more  in  a  little  different  form.  We  have  seen,  from 
the  look  we  have  had  into  the  reality  of '  thing,'  that  we  could 
find  no  definite,  hard,  and  self-existent  'stuff'  out  of  which  the 
world  is  made ;  and  that,  in  the  last  analysis,  even  if  it  be 
assumed,  against  the  trend  of  science,  that  there  are  essential 
and  ultimate  atoms  in  the  ordinary  sense,  there  must  be  still 
behind  these  a  power  of '  manufacturing  '  —  of  shaping,  endow- 
ing, and  moving  them  which  presupposes  meaning  and  intelli- 
gence, —  that  is,  Personality. 

But  passing  this,  what  ground  have  we  in  science  to  think  that 
the  two  necessary  postulates,  Mass  and  Motion,  are  material? 
Motion  we  have  seen  to  be  a  quality  or  condition,  and  Inertia 
or  Mass,  a  reaction.  Neither  can  subsist  without  a  'ground,' 
deeper  than  itself.  Now,  if  science  can  find  no  place  for  the 
hard,  inert,  dead  stuff,  commonly  supposed  to  compose  matter, 
in  the  concept  Mass,  what  possible  reason  can  there  be  for 
holding  it  to  be  the  ultimate  '  ground  '  itself  ?  And  besides, 
any  theory  of  external  reality  demands  '  energy '  to  produce 
action ;  and  the  only  kind  of  energy  indisputably  known  to  us  is 
personal  or  self-energy. 

Then,  is  there  not  better  reason  for  thinking  that  all  action 
and  reaction  which  is  comprised  in  the  scientific  postulate 
of  the  '  conservation  of  energy  '  finds  its  reality  in  a  some- 


RELATION    OF    PERSONALITY   TO    SPACE,    ETC.       2Q9 

what  which  we  do  actually  know  to  be  a  necessary  factor  of 
the  cosmos,  than  in  a  somewhat  which  we  do  not  know,  and 
have  much  reason  to  deny  a  possible  existence  ?  From  any  one 
of  these  several  points  of  view,  materialism,  as  commonly 
understood,  is  impossible ;  and  it  is  not  therefore  surprising 
that  no  recognized  leader  of  science  commits  himself  to  it ;  and 
there  is  no  one,  perhaps,  who  would  not  convict  himself  of  a 
contrary  belief  if  he  could  be  subjected  to  a  cross-examination. 
It  may  be  well  to  reassure  the  reader  that  neither  science 
nor  metaphysic  has  any  power  or  purpose  to  spirit  away  the 
solid  and  substantial  world  he  is  accustomed  to,  and  substitute  in 
its  stead  some  sort  of  mazy  dream-world.  Whatever  may  be 
the  conclusions  of  philosophy,  the  world  will  continue  to  be, 
after  all,  just  what  we  have  all  along  known  it  to  be  —  all  too 
substantial  and  hard  for  some  of  us.  Matter,  such  as  the 
mathematical  physicist  discovers  in  '  thing,'  and  spirit,  in  the 
metaphysical  sense,  do  not  seem  to  differ ;  and  if  that  sort  of 
matter  is  thought-stuff  (and  must  it  not  be  from  a  materialistic 
point  of  view  ?) ,  it  must  have  Personality  in  or  behind  it,  and 
is  thus  just  what  most  people  have  meant  all  along  by  spirit. 
But  the  difference  is  world-wide,  if  the  wrong  end  is  fixed  upon 
as  the  firms,  and  Personality  made  but  an  attribute  or  phenom- 
enon of  either  matter  or  spirit.  So  long  as  it  is  recognized 
that  Personality  is  the  primordial  reality,  to  which  the  real  in 
any  form  or  manifestation  whatever  must  look  for  its  '  being ' 
or  meaning,  no  harm  would  result  from  a  change  of  names, 
however  impossible  of  accomplishment.  The  thought-world 
and  the  material  world,  as  we  know  them,  would  remain  un- 
changed and  we  should  simply  have  the  cosmos  as  it  is.  The 
important  point  is  not  to  fall  into  the  error  of  assuming  Per- 
sonality to  be  but  a  quality,  an  attribute  or  a  product  of  the  cos- 
mos. That  it  cannot  be  so  may  be  put  syllogistically,  thus  :  An 
attribute  or  phenomenon  cannot  be  conceived  of  as  doing,  know- 
ing, or  feeling  anything  whatever,  but  Personality  acts,  knows, 
and  feels ;  therefore  Personality  cannot  be  a  phenomenon. 


300 


MECHANISM    AND    PERSONALITY. 


CHAPTER   XXVIII. 

SOME   OF  THE   GREAT   METAPHYSICAL  SYSTEMS. 

Idealism.  Fichte.  Lotze  quoted.  Schelling.  Hegelianism.  Hegel 
quoted.  Objections  to  Absolute  Idealism.  Lotze's  position  commended. 
The  Supreme  Good. 

TT  is  possible,  and  the  attempt  has  been  made  in  different 
J.  forms,  to  consider  all  things  and  events  to  be  but  the  sub- 
jective modes  or  habits  of  the  self,  —  holding  that  '  a  non- 
existent world  '  is  simply  mirrored  before  us.  This  is  '  Subjec- 
tive Idealism,'  and  in  modern  times  has  Johann  Gottlieb  Fichte 
for  its  father. 

Stated  in  this  naked  way,  it  seems  absurd  enough ;  but  un- 
satisfactory as  it  is,  one  who  is  at  the  pains  to  understand  the 
good  and  great  Fichte  will  have  small  room  for  contempt. 
Lewes,  an  avowed  empiricist,  and  therefore  quite  out  of  sym- 
pathy with  the  whole  school  of  transcendental  philosophy,  says, 
in  his  "  History  of  Philosophy  "  :  "  Let  us  at  the  outset  request 
the  reader  to  give  no  heed  to  any  of  the  witticisms  he  may  hear, 
or  which  may  suggest  themselves  to  him  on  a  hasty  considera- 
tion of  Fichte's  opinions.  That  the  opinions  are  not  those  of 
ordinary  thinkers,  we  admit ;  that  they  are  repugnant  to  all 
'  common  sense,'  we  must  also  admit ;  that  they  are  false,  we 
believe  :  but  we  also  believe  them  to  have  been  laborious 
products  of  an  earnest  mind,  the  consequences  of  admitted 
premises,  drawn  with  singular  audacity  and  subtlety,  and  no 
mere  caprices  of  ingenious  speculation,  —  no  paradoxes  of  an 
acute  but  trifling  mind." 

It  has  been  remarked  that  Fichte's  system  is  one  absolutely 


SOME   OF   THE    GREAT    METAPHYSICAL    SYSTEMS.       30 1 

refusing  to  be  compressed  with  intelligibility,  and  he  must  be 
an  uncommon  man  who  can  confidently  affirm  that  he  has  fully 
mastered  it.  The  whole  of  '  Speculative  Philosophy  '  in  mod- 
ern times  finds  its  starting-point  in  Descartes.  Decidedly  the 
most  important  epoch  after  Descartes  is  found  in  the  Critical 
Philosophy  of  Kant ;  but  Kant's  work  was  in  the  beginning,  and 
remained  substantially  just  what  he  calls  it,  Critical.  He  did  not 
attempt  to  erect  his  philosophy  into  a  system.  He  did  much 
to  make  clear  the  transcendental,  or  non-empirical  factor  in 
cognition,  and  to  point  out  the  conditions  under  which  rational 
thinking  is  possible  ;  but  these  conditions  were  established,  not 
from  the  nature  of  the  ego  itself,  but  rather  from  empirical 
sources.  He  did  not  let  go  a  firm  belief  in  a  real  objective 
content  in  our  knowledge  of  the  external  world ;  that  is,  he 
always  held  that  the  material  world  exists  independently  of  any 
mode  or  state  of  the  ego.  But  yet  he  opened  wide  the  door  to 
Idealism,  and  Fichte  was  not  slow  to  enter.  The  '  thing-in- 
itself/  which  in  his  philosophy  supports  the  phenomena  of  all 
bodies,  he  holds  to  be  inconceivable ;  and  essential  matter  is 
left  without  anything  by  which  it  can  be  identified  with  gross 
matter.  The  step  is  not  a  long  one  to  the  denial  of  all  objec- 
tive reality ;  and  Fichte  was  greatly  surprised  that  his  master 
should  not  only  not  receive  his  proposed  contribution  with  favor, 
but  reject  it  with  small  ceremony. 

Fichte  declared  that  Kant  had  prepared  the  way  and  the 
materials  for  a  philosophy ;  they  needed  systematizing  and  co- 
ordinating, and  this  was  the  task  he  set  himself  in  his  "  Theory 
of -Science  "  (  Wissenschaftslehre).  It  would  be  out  of  place  to 
attempt  any  analysis  of  his  method.  We  must  content  our- 
selves with  a  word  as  to  the  general  result.  He  begins  with 
the  individual  ego,  but  as  he  goes  on,  he  develops  the  fact  that 
the  real  basis  of  his  system  is  the  Absolute  Ego  :  from  the  Ab- 
solute Ego  (God)  spring  all  the  individual  egos.  God  is  the 
Infinite  Energy,  —  the  Infinite  Thinker,  —  who  becomes  con- 


302 


MECHANISM    AND    PERSONALITY. 


scious  of  Himself  by  self-diremption  into  individual  egos.  The 
Individual  ego  knows  itself  by  the  reaction  of  the  non-ego, 
which  is  itself  but  a  self-limitation  of  the  Absolute  Ego.  The 
paramount  principle  over  all  is  the  Will. 

It  is  confessed  on  all  hands  that  the  theory  of  '  Subjective 
Idealism,'  though  it  may  not  be  true,  is  impossible  of  successful 
refutation.  Whatever  may  be  the  nature  of  that  which  pro- 
duces cognition  in  the  self,  we  know  it  only  through  such  cog- 
nition ;  and  resist  as  we  may,  cognition  is  the  sole  witness,  and 
we  cannot  get  beyond  it. 

Lotze  says  :  "  The  demonstration  of  the  '  thorough-going  sub- 
jectivity of  all  the  elements  of  our  cognition/  —  sensations,  pure 
intuitions,  and  pure  notions  of  the  understanding,  —  is  in  no 
respect  decisive  against  the  assumption  of  the  existence  of 
1  a  world  of  things  outside  ourselves.'  For  it  is  clear  that  this 
'  subjectivity  of  cognition '  must  in  any  case  be  true,  whether 
'  Things  '  do  or  do  not  exist.  For  even  if  '  Things  '  exist,  still 
our  cognition  of  them  cannot  consist  in  their  actually  finding 
an  entrance  into  us,  but  only  in  their  exerting  an  action  upon 
us.  But  the  products  of  this  action,  as  affections  of  our  being, 
can  receive  their  form  from  our  nature  alone.  And,  as  it  is 
easy  to  persuade  ourselves,  even  in  the  case  '  Things '  do  actu- 
ally exist,  all  parts  of  our  cognition  will  have  the  very  same 
'  subjectivity '  as  that  from  which  it  might  be  hastily  concluded 
that  'Things  '  do  not  exist. 

"  The  assertion  that  the  World  is  the  creation  of  his  own 
energy  in  his  imagination  could  not  possibly  be  accomplished 
with  complete  freedom  from  obscurity  by  any  one  except  some 
lone  individual  indulging  in  philosophic  speculation.  Since  it 
is  quite  too  absurd  that  this  one  person  deemed  the  remaining 
spirits,  too,  in  whose  society  he  is  conscious  of  living,  as  merely 
products  of  his  own  fantasy ;  and  since  rather  the  same  kind 
of  reality  for  all  spirits,  at  least,  must  be  credited,  therefore  the 
question  arises  :  How  do  these  individual  spirits,  A,  B,  C,  D, .  . . 


SOME    OF    THE    GREAT    METAPHYSICAL    SYSTEMS.       303 

come  to  produce,  by  means  of  their  faculties  of  imagination, 
four  (or,  if  the  case  require  it,  n)  pictures  of  the  world,  which 
have  as  a  whole  the  same  content,  but  which  so  vary  in  their 
particular  features,  that  the  other  spirits,  B,  C,  D,  .  .  .  appear 
to  A  at  definite  places,  and  A  in  turn  to  them  at  another  place  ; 
in  brief,  that  all  appear  to  each  other  in  such  manner  as  to 
make  it  possible  for  one  to  seek  for  and  to  meet  with  the  others, 
for  the  sake  of  a  mutual  action  in  this  non-existent  phantom 
world?" 

In  the  hands  of  Schelling,  Fichte's  Idealism  undergoes  cer- 
tain transformations.  The  '  object '  with  Fichte  had  reality,  it  is 
true,  but  it  depended  entirely  upon  the  Absolute  Will ;  the 
non-ego  was  the  product  of  the  ego,  and  so  had  no  content 
in  itself.  Schelling  identifies  subject  and  object,  and  gives  us 
what  is  called  Objective  Idealism.  "  Nature  is  spirit  visible  ; 
spirit  is  invisible  nature."  Schwegler  epitomizes  the  earlier 
views  of  Schelling  as  follows  :  "  The  first  origin  of  the  concep- 
tion of  matter  springs  from  nature  and  the  intuition  of  the 
human  mind.  The  mind  is  the  union  of  an  unlimited  and  lim- 
iting energy.  If  there  were  no  limit  to  the  mind,  consciousness 
would  be  just  as  impossible  as  if  the  mind  were  totally  and 
absolutely  limited.  Feeling,  perception,  and  knowledge  are  only 
conceivable  as  the  energy  which  strives  for  the  unlimited  be- 
comes limited  through  its  opposite,  and  as  this  latter  becomes 
itself  freed  from  its  limitations.  The  actual  mind  or  heart  con- 
sists only  in  the  antagonism  of  these  two  energies,  and  hence 
only  in  their  ever  approximate  or  relative  unity.  Just  so  it 
is  in  nature.  Matter  as  such  is  not  the  first,  for  the  forces  of 
which  it  is  the  unity  are  before  it.  Matter  is  only  to  be  appre- 
hended as  the  ever-becoming  product  of  attraction  and  repul- 
sion ;  it  is  not,  therefore,  a  mere  inert  grossness,  as  we  are  apt 
to  represent  it,  but  these  forces  are  its  original.  But  force  in 
the  material  is  like  something  immaterial.  Force  in  nature  is 
that  which  we  may  compare  to  mind.  Since  now  the  mind  or 


3O4  MECHANISM    AND    PERSONALITY. 

heart  exhibits  precisely  the  same  conflict,  as  matter,  of  oppo- 
site forces,  we  must  unite  the  two  in  a  higher  identity.  But 
the  organ  of  the  mind  for  apprehending  nature  is  the  intuition 
which  takes,  as  object  of  the  external  sense,  the  space  which 
has  been  filled  and  limited  by  the  attracting  and  repelling 
forces.  Thus  Schelling  was  led  to  the  conclusion  that  the  same 
absolute  appears  in  nature  as  in  mind,  and  that  the  harmony  of 
these  is  something  more  than  a  thought  in  reference  to  them. 
.  .  .  The  world  is  the  actual  unity  of  a  positive  and  a  nega- 
tive principle,  '  and  these  two  conflicting  forces  taken  together 
or  separated  in  their  conflict,  lead  to  the  idea  of  an  organizing 
principle  which  makes  the  world  a  system,  in  other  worlds,  to 
the  idea  of  a  world-soul.'  " 

Without  attempting  to  follow  Schelling  in  the  development 
of  his  subtle  and  elaborate  system,  we  have  only  to  say  that  he 
seems  to  have  lost  himself  at  last  in  the  mazes  of  mysticism. 
His  earlier  position,  while  not  free  from  difficulties  (can  any 
system  be  ?) ,  was  stronger,  and  doubtless  nearer  the  truth.  His 
latest  enunciations,  after  a  long  period  of  silence,  were  con- 
fused and  strongly  pantheistic. 

We  are  quite  conscious  of  the  fact  that  pantheism  is  a  charge 
easily  made,  and  that  any  system  is  in  some  sort  open  to  it. 
There  is  a  right  pantheism,  and  a  wrong.  So  long  as  Person- 
ality is  clear  and  conspicuous,  no  system  can  be  offensively 
pantheistic.  It  becomes  so  when  this  primordial  fact  is  lost 
or  confused,  —  when  the  world  comes  to  be  what  it  appeared 
to  Professor  Teufelsdrockh  at  that  great  crisis  in  his  life,  when 
he  declares  :  "  To  me  the  Universe  was  void  of  all  Life,  of  Pur- 
pose, of  Volition,  even  of  Hostility :  it  was  one  huge,  dead, 
immeasurable  Steam-Engine,  rolling  on,  in  its  dead  indifference, 
to  grind  me  limb  from  limb.  O  the  vast,  gloomy,  solitary  Gol- 
gotha, and  Mill  of  Death  !  Why  was  the  Living  banished 
thither,  companionless,  conscious?" 

The  system  of  'Absolute  Idealism'  (Hegel)  has  perhaps 


SOME    OF    THE    GREAT    METAPHYSICAL    SYSTEMS.       305 

made  most  stir  in  the  world.  Schelling  and  Hegel  began  their 
work  together,  or  more  accurately,  Schelling,  who  had  some 
years  the  start,  extended  a  hand  to  the  younger  philosopher, 
and  accepted  him  as  his  coadjutor  and  peer.  They  parted 
company  after  a  time,  the  younger  soaring  on  to  a  brilliant 
height,  the  elder  suffering  a  partial  eclipse. 

The  system  of  Hegel  is  simply  astounding  in  its  logical 
astuteness  and  obscurity.  Nobody  presumes  to  question,  or 
understand,  its  philosophic  sweep.  It  has  come  to  be  an 
accepted  pleasantry  that  it  is  unanswerable,  because  nobody 
dare  say  he  fully  comprehends  it.  The  master  himself  put  an 
estoppel  on  his  disciples  when  he  declared :  "  One  man  has 
understood  me,  and  he  has  not."  How  then  shall  any  who  is 
not  a  disciple  dare  presume  ? 

But,  understood  or  not,  Hegelianism  has  deservedly  exerted 
a  powerful  influence  upon  the  thought  of  the  world.  It  is  now 
no  longer  a  school  in  Germany;  in  England  and  America, 
efforts  partially  successful  have  rehabilitated  it  in  a  manner; 
but  if  we  may  rely  upon  such  an  ardent  defender  as  Dr.  William 
Wallace,  "  few  if  any  profess  to  accept  the  system  in  its  in- 
tegrity." 

The  differences  between  Schelling  and  Hegel  are  serious 
enough,  from  a  philosophical  point  of  view,  but  can  only  be 
appreciated  by  those  who  have  already  gained  a  considerable 
insight  into  the  systems  of  the  two  philosophers,  while  they 
both  owe  their  groundwork,  and  much  of  their  superstructure, 
to  Fichte. 

Hegel  starts  with  'Being,'  which  in  its  want  of  content  is 
utter  emptiness  or  nothing.  These  two  concepts  are,  at  the 
same  time,  absolutely  identical  and  absolutely  contradictory  — 
either  losing  itself  in  the  other.  But  perhaps  the  reader  will 
like  a  plunge  of  half  a  minute  into  the  philosopher's  own  phra- 
seology. He  says,  in  the  "  Logic  "  :  "If  we  enunciate  Being  as 
the  predicate  of  the  Absolute,  we  get  the  first  definition  of  the 


306  MECHANISM    AND    PERSONALITY. 

latter.  The  Absolute  is  Being.  So  far  as  thought  goes,  this 
is  the  initial  definition,  the  most  abstract  and  sterile.  .  .  . 
But  this  mere  Being,  as  it  is  mere  Abstraction,  is  therefore 
absolutely  negative ;  which,  in  a  similarly  immediate  aspect  is 
just  what  may  be  said  of  nothing.  Hence  we  derive  the 
second  definition  of  the  Absolute  ;  the  Absolute  is  the  naught. 
.  .  .  Nothing,  which  is  thus  immediate  and  identical  with 
itself,  is  conversely  the  same  as  Being  is.  The  truth  of  Being 
and  of  Nothing  is  accordingly  the  unity  of  the  two ;  and  this 
unity  is  Becoming" 

The  philosopher  fully  appreciated  the  opening  he  gave  for 
ridicule.  He  says  :  "  The  proposition  that  Being  is  the  same 
as  Nothing  seems  so  paradoxical  to  the  imagination  or  under- 
standing that  it  is  perhaps  taken  as  a  joke.  ...  It  is  as  cor- 
rect, however,  to  say  that  Being  and  Nothing  are  altogether 
different,  as  to  assert  their  unity ;  the  one  is  not  what  the 
other  is." 

"  In  Becoming,  the  Being  which  is  one  with  Nothing,  and  the 
Nothing  which  is  one  with  Being,  are  only  vanishing  factors ; 
they  are,  and  they  are  not.  Thus  by  its  inherent  contradiction 
Becoming  collapses ;  or  is  precipitated  into  the  unity,  in  which 
the  two  elements  are  entirely  lost  to  view.  This  result  is 
accordingly  Being  determinate,  or  definite.  ...  To  Being, 
therefore,  in  this  stage  is  attached  a  determinateness  (a  certain 
cognizability)  which,  as  it  is  immediate  and  said  to  be,  is  Qual- 
ity. And  as  reflected  into  itself  in  being  so  determined,  the 
determinate  Being  is  Somewhat,  in  being  there  and  then.  .  .  . 
Quality,  as  determinateness  which  is,  as  contrasted  with  the 
Negation  which  is  involved  in  it,  but  distinct  from  it,  is  Reality. 
Negation,  which  is  no  longer  an  abstract  nothing,  but  Somewhat 
which  is-there-and-then,  becomes  a  mere  form  to  Being  —  it  is 
Being  other  than  some-Being.  This  Other-Being,  though  a 
determination  of  Quality  itself,  is  in  the  first  instance  distinct 
from  it.  Quality  is  B eing-f or- Another  —  one  width,  as  it  were, 


SOME    OF    THE    GREAT    METAPHYSICAL    SYSTEMS.       307 

of  Determinate  Being,  or  of  Somewhat.  The  Being  of  Quality, 
as  such,  contrasted  with  this  reference  connecting  it  with  another, 
is  Being-by-Self." 

This  will  doubtless  be  enough  for  most  readers.  It  is  not 
jargon,  as  some  may  be  inclined  to  think,  but  every  sentence 
above  is  full  of  solid  truth.  Its  form,  however,  is  so  uncouth, 
or  at  least,  so  out  of  the  run  of  common  phraseology,  that  the 
meaning  is  not  obvious  at  first  glance. 

With  Fichte  the  ego  devours  the  non-ego  —  all  is  subject ; 
with  Schelling  the  ego  and  the  non-ego  both  subsist,  and  their 
identity  is  indifference ;  but  with  Hegel  the  relation  between 
the  two  forms  the  basis  of  all  truth.  The  discovery  of  relation 
is  the  province  of  thought,  and  so  he  resolves  the  Universe  into 
Thought,  and  his  Metaphysic  is  Logic.  Everything  is  rational, 
and  everything  rational  is  actual.  Schwegler  epitomizes  his 
position  as  follows  :  "  The  '  idea '  is  the  highest  logical  definition 
of  the  Absolute.  The  immediate  existence  of  the  idea  we  call 
life,  or  the  process  of  life.  Everything  living  is  self-end,  immi- 
nent-end. The  '  idea  '  posited  in  its  difference  as  a  relation  of 
objective  and  subjective  is  the  true  and  good.  The  true  is  the 
objective  rationality  subjectively  posited  ;  the  good  is  the  sub- 
jective rationality  carried  into  objectivity.  Both  conceptions 
together  constitute  the  Absolute  idea,  which  is  just  as  truly  as 
it  should  be,  i.e.  the  good  is  just  so  truly  actualized  as  the  true 
is  living  and  self-realizing.  The  absolute  and  full  idea  is  in 
space,  because  it  discharges  itself  from  itself  as  its  reflection ; 
this  its  being  in  space  is  Nature." 

A  true  Hegelian  is  apt  to  look  with  a  certain  degree  of  intel- 
lectual compassion  upon  any  who,  pretending  to  think  at  all, 
do  not  embrace  the  Hegelian  system  in  its  fulness.  Whatever 
is  true,  no  matter  if  it  be  as  old  as  Parmenides  and  Heraclitus 
(to  whom  Hegel  freely  acknowledges  his  obligations),  they 
seem  to  insist  upon  seizing  to  the  behoof  of  their  Master. 


308  MECHANISM    AND    PERSONALITY. 

There  was  philosophy  before  Hegel,  great  as  he  undoubtedly 
was,  and  his  system  does  not  close  the  circle  of  thought. 

Serious  objections  are  urged  against  the  system.  In  the 
first  place,  with  regard  to  method  :  he,  beyond  all  the  Ideal- 
ists, starts  with  the  most  '  abstract  and  sterile  '  concept  —  the 
Absolute  which  he  defines  as  Being  or  Naught  —  and  from  this, 
without  break,  he  professes  to  deduce  the  World ;  which  must, 
of  course,  include  '  Thought '  in  which  all  things  find  reality. 
Does  he  do  it?  Does  he  not  rather  drop  down  into  the  known 
world  at  every  point  to  get  material  with  which  to  build  his 
Logical  Palace? 

With  regard  to  his  famous  '  Dialectic,'  the  instrument  he 
uses  in  constructing  his  giddy  heights,  he  is  clearly  entitled  to 
a  caveat  in  modem  times.  It  consists,  in  a  word,  of  the  play 
between  Being  and  Naught.  Before  a  thing  can  be  known, 
it  must  be  '  othered,'  or  pass  out  of  itself  into  negation,  and 
from  it  return  as  posited  or  known  :  thus  contradiction  is  abso- 
lutely necessary  to  the  knowledge  of  anything. 

In  the  second  place,  he  uses  '  thought '  in  a  non-natural  and 
misleading  sense  —  else  Thought  and  Being  cannot  be  identical. 
Thinking  is  an  activity ;  it  is  a  mode,  and  never  can  be  '  thing.' 
It  is  essentially  dynamic,  and  presupposes  a  subject.  Thought 
does  not  think.  The  thinker  only  thinks,  and  the  content  of 
thought  is  like  and  unlike  —  relation.  The  claim  is  made, 
and  it  may  be  quite  just,  that  in  the  Hegelian  system  "  thought 
regarded  as  the  basis  of  all  existence  is  not  consciousness  with 
its  distinction  of  ego  and  non-ego  "  ;  that  "  it  is  rather  the  stuff 
of  which  both  mind  and  nature  are  made,  neither  extended  as 
in  the  natural  world,  nor  self-centred  as  in  the  mind  "  ;  but  if 
this  be  true,  it  is  unfair  to  call  such  an  entity  thought,  since  it 
differs  as  wide  as  the  poles  from  the  notion  the  world  has,  and 
is  sure  to  retain,  of  thought  and  thinking. 

Another,  and  the  most  serious  objection,  is  that  it  mutilates 
Personality.  Thought,  in  any  way  it  may  be  construed,  is  not 


SOME    OF    THE    GREAT    METAPHYSICAL    SYSTEMS.        309 

Person ;  the  self  is  a  thinker,  bat  this  activity  is  but  one  mode 
of  the  self:  the  self  is  also  energy  or  will,  which  is  distinct  from 
thought ;  and  it  is  Feeling,  which  cannot  be  confounded  with 
either :  and  no  system  can  embrace  the  whole  truth  which 
leaves  out  of  account,  or  which  only  smuggles  in,  Personality. 

Again,  the  system  of  Hegel  attempts  to  do  what  we  regard 
as  unphilosophical  and  impossible.  Instead  of  confining  him- 
self to  the  actual  world  as  discoverable  in  the  Universe  as  it  is, 
he  attempts  to  transcend  the  domain  of  all  actual  knowledge, 
and  establish  laws  which  must  have  governed  the  develop- 
ment of  the  cosmos,  or  which  the  Creator  must  have  followed 
in  his  own  creation ;  and  after  he  has  his  Logic-world,  the 
Creator  has  no  proper  part  or  function  in  it.  He  is  at  last  an 
abstraction,  —  the  naught. 

Goethe  says,  somewhere,  Man  is  not  born  to  solve  the  mys- 
teries of  existence,  but  he  must,  nevertheless,  attempt  it,  in 
order  that  he  may  learn  to  keep  within  the  limits  of  the  know- 
able.  The  problem  of  how  to  construct  a  World  is  not  pro- 
posed for  our  solution,  and  is  inconsequent  and  presumptuous. 
We  must  recognize  the  fact  that  the  world  is  a  revelation  to  us, 
as  we  are  a  revelation  to  ourselves.  We  must  accept  what,  by 
the  conditions  of  our  being,  is  forced  upon  us ;  and  although 
we  may  take  upon  our  lips  great  swelling  words  of  doubt  and 
denial,  march  against  high  heaven,  and  assault  it  by  logic  or  by 
hate,  we  but  strut  and  vapor  in  an  idle  show,  and  return  at  last 
to  that  which  is  given  us  in  the  world  as  it  appears  to  us  through 
the  self. 

Philosophically,  we  take  our  stand  humbly  by  the  side  of  the 
gentle,  full-souled  Lotze.  He  says  :  "  If  things  exist  and  events 
happen  simply  in  order  that  the  formal  relations  of  Identity 
and  Opposition,  Unity  and  Multiplicity,  Indifference  and  Polar- 
ity, of  Universal,  Particular,  and  Singular,  etc.,  may  be  actualized 
in  the  most  manifold  manner  possible,  and  set  forth  in  Phe- 
nomena •  then,  of  course,  the  essence  of  '  Things  '  is  so  pitiful 


310  MECHANISM    AND    PERSONALITY. 

and  insignificant  that  our  thinking  succeeds  perfectly  well  in 
adequately  comprehending  it. 

"  The  teaching  of  Fichte  had  been  different.  The  problem 
of  Spirit,  he  held,  does  not  lie  in  the  cognition  of  a  blind  Being 
(the  conception  of  which  appeared  to  him  as  impossible  as  it 
appears  to  us),  but  in  action.  The  aforesaid  world  is  not,  but 
appears  to  us  in  order  to  serve  as  material  for  our  duty,  as 
inducement  or  object  of  our  action." 

For  the  '  action '  of  Fichte,  Lotze  proposes  to  substitute  the 
Good  —  for  which  ' action'  is  simply  the  indispensable  form 
of  actualization ;  in  which  supreme  concept  is  included  the 
*  Beautiful,'  the  'True,'  and  all  blessedness  —  uniting  into  one 
complex  whole  all  that  has  Value.  "  And  now,"  he  says,  "  we 
affirm  :  Genuine  Reality  in  the  World  (to  wit,  in  the  sense  that 
all  else  is,  in  relation  to  It,  subordinate,  deduced,  mere  sem- 
blance or  means  to  an  end)  consists  alone  in  this  Highest  Good 
personal,  which  is  at  the  same  time  the  Highest  Good  Thing. 
But  since  all  the  Value  of  what  is  valuable  has  existence  only  in 
the  Spirit  that  enjoys  it,  therefore,  all  apparent  actuality  is  only 
a  system  of  contrivances,  by  means  of  which  this  determinate 
world  of  phenomena,  as  well  as  these  determinate  Metaphysical 
habitudes  for  considering  the  world  of  phenomena,  are  called 
forth,  in  order  that  the  aforesaid  Highest  Good  may  become 
for  the  Spirit  an  object  of  enjoyment  in  all  the  multiplicity  of 
forms  possible  to  it. 

"  The  objectivity  of  our  cognition  consists,  therefore,  in  this, 
that  it  is  not  a  meaningless  play  of  mere  seeming ;  but  it  brings 
before  us  a  World  whose  coherency  is  ordered  in  pursuance  of 
the  injunction  of  the  Sole  Reality  of  the  World,  to  wit,  of  the 
Good.  Our  cognition  thus  possesses  more  of  truth  than  if  it 
copied  exactly  a  world  of  objects  which  has  no  value  in  itself. 
Although  it  does  not  comprehend  in  what  manner  all  that  is 
phenomenon  is  presented  to  its  view,  still  it  understands  what 
is  the  meaning  of  it  all ;  and  is  like  to  a  spectator  who  compre- 


SOME    OF    THE    GREAT    METAPHYSICAL    SYSTEMS.       311 

hends  the  esthetic  significance  of  that  which  takes  place  on  the 
stage  of  a  theatre,  and  would  gain  nothing  essential  if  he  were 
to  see  besides  the  machinery  by  means  of  which  the  changes 
are  effected  on  the  stage." 

It  is  impossible  that  there  shall  not  constantly  arise  in  our 
minds  a  demand  to  know  more  of  the  Good  (only  another,  if 
another,  name  for  God)  than  can  ever  meet  with  adequate 
response.  We  cannot  but  ask,  in  some  inarticulate  way,  even 
when  we  know  that  the  answer  cannot  be  given  except  in  terms 
which  degrade  the  Ultimate,  in  the  very  act,  from  its  awe- 
inspiring  reserve,  Where  is  it  ?  How  is  it  ?  What  is  it  ?  And 
it  is  doubtless  because  the  answers  given  only  too  readily  by 
certain  classes  of  Theologians  —  who,  somehow  the  world  seems 
to  think,  ought  to  know  —  have  been  so  definite  and  exact  in 
'  words  without  knowledge,'  and  which  men  in  our  day  have 
come  to  recognize  as  narrow  and  inadequate,  that  so  many 
deprecate  the  notion  of  personal  existence  in  the  Infinite,  and 
attempt  to  find  more  satisfying  forms  of  such  existence  in  ideas 
of  an  Eternal  World- Order,  an  Infinite  Substance,  or  a  Self- 
developing  Idea. 

We  must  allow  ourselves  a  few  words  from  the  "  Microcos- 
mos  "  touching  at  least  one  of  these  proposed  substitutes  :  "What 
noble  motives  and  what  moral  earnestness  may  lead  to  the  dis- 
solving of  the  Divine  Being  in  that  of  a  Moral  World-Order,  as 
contrasted  with  crude  anthropomorphism,  must  be  still  fresh  in 
men's  remembrance.  And  yet  Fichte  was  not  right  when,  with 
inspired  words,  he  opposed  his  own  sublime  conception  to  the 
common,  narrow-minded  idea  of  a  Personal  God ;  because  he 
sought  that  which  was  most  sublime,  he  thought  that  he  had 
found  it  in  the  conception  which  he  reached ;  if  he  had  fol- 
lowed out  to  the  end  the  path  which  he  took,  he  would  have 
recognized  that  by  it  that  which  he  sought  could  not  be 
reached.  The  question,  How  is  it  that  a  World-Order  can  be 
conceived  as  the  Supreme  Principle?  cannot  be  put  off  by 


312  MECHANISM    AND    PERSONALITY. 

appealing  to  the  fact  that  we  cannot  demand  a  history  of  the 
origin  of  the  Principle  itself;  he  who,  regarding  Personality  as 
an  impossible  conception  of  the  Godhead,  prefers  some  other 
to  it,  will  at  least  have  to  show  that  the  one  which  he  brings 
forward  is  not  contradictory;  for  nothing  will  be  gained  by 
substituting  for  an  impossibility  some  other  assumption  of  which 
the  possibility  is  not  proved.  Now  the  fact  is,  that  the  one  suf- 
ficient reason  which  will  always  forbid  that  some  World-Order 
should  be  put  in  the  place  of  God,  is  to  be  found  in  the  simple 
fact  that  no  order  is  separable  from  the  ordered  material  in 
which  it  is  realized,  still  less  can  precede  such  material  as  a 
conditioning  or  creative  force ;  the  order  must  ever  be  a  rela- 
tion of  something  which  exists,  after  or  during  its  existence. 
Hence,  if  it  is  nothing  but  Order,  as  its  name  says,  it  is  never 
that  which  orders,  which  is  what  we  seek,  and  which  the  ordi- 
nary notion  of  God  (however  inadequate  in  other  respects) 
determined  rightly  at  any  rate  in  this,  that  it  regarded  it  as  a 
Real  being,  not  as  a  relation." 

We  cannot  pursue  the  subject  further.  All  efforts  to  empty 
the  Universe  of  a  Personal  Author  and  Sustainer  must  face  the 
rebuke  of  the  Hebrew  Prophet,  "  Shall  the  work  say  of  Him 
that  made  it,  He  made  me  not  ?  or  shall  the  thing  framed  say 
of  Him  that  framed  it,  He  had  no  understanding?  " 


ETHICAL.  313 

CHAPTER  XXIX. 

ETHICAL. 

Self-activity  necessary  to  Morality.  No  Liberty  in  Sensibility  or  Cogni- 
tion, as  such.  Choice.  Motives.  The  '  Good.'  Obligation.  Man  held 
to  be  Omniscient.  No  Obligation  in  Selfness.  Altruism.  How  the  Will 
of  the  Supreme  Good  is  known.  The  '  Categorical  Imperative.' 

IT  is  idle  to  dispute  that  there  can  be  no  moral  good  if  there 
be  no  liberty  of  action.  As  a  universal  fact  of  conscious- 
ness, no  man  is  held  to  be  the  author  of  a  deed  if  it  be  known 
that  he  was  absolutely  compelled  at  all  points  to  do  the  deed. 
Indeed,  we  do  not  even  say,  in  such  case,  that  he  did  it.  For 
example,  suppose  one  were  taken  by  force  and  placed  upon 
one's  knees  before  an  idol ;  it  would  be  sheer  perversion  of 
words  and  sense  to  say  that  that  man  knelt  to  the  idol ;  it 
would  be  impossible  to  think  of  him  as  in  any  wise  responsible 
for  the  action.  And  this  must  be  true  in  all  cases  where  the 
possibility  of  self-activity  is  absolutely  cut  off. 

Now  there  is  no  question  here  as  to  whether  we  are  bound 
ultimately,  as  some  hold  to  be  the  case,  by  a  rigidly  predeter- 
mined order,  or  not.  All  that  we  say,  for  the  purposes  of  this 
argument,  is  that  if  we  are  so  bound,  in  every  particular,  we 
are  not  responsible,  and  the  actions  attributed  to  us  are  in  no 
sense  ours. 

Now  of  the  three  fundamental  modes  in  which  personality 
manifests  itself,  —  sensibility,  cognition,  and  volition,  —  two,  as 
such,  are  absolutely  bound.  Sensibility  is,  if  we  may  so  say, 
the  motive  or  propelling  power ;  cognition,  the  knowing  or  in- 
tellectual power ;  while  it  is  reserved  for  the  will  to  give  direc- 
tion and  control  our  actions. 


314  MECHANISM    AND    PERSONALITY. 

That  the  sensibilities  are  compelled  to  receive  whatever  is 
impressed  upon  them  by  stimuli,  without  the  possibility  of  the 
sensibilities  themselves  varying  their  reactions  in  response  to 
such  stimuli,  is  easily  seen.  In  a  given  state  of  my  visual 
organs,  and  with  my  eyes  fixed  upon  a  page,  can  they  create 
or  drive  away  the  characters  which  I  see  ?  If  a  sharp  instru- 
ment be  thrust  into  my  flesh,  is  the  pain  of  my  making  ?  can  I 
bid  it  begin  or  cease  ?  A  rose  is  brought  within  the  radius  of 
my  olfactories ;  am  I  at  liberty  to  perceive  its  perfume  or  not  ? 
So  long  as  I  am  conscious,  I  am  compelled  to  suffer  just  such 
pain,  or  perceive  just  such  agreeable  affections,  at  that  moment 
as  my  nervous  organism  in  its  then  state  is  competent  to  reveal. 

The  case  is  equally  obvious  with  respect  to  the  intelligence. 
It,  too,  is  fast  bound.  By  the  understanding  I  am  made  to 
know  the  meaning  of  the  words  on  the  printed  page ;  that  the 
instrument  is  sharp,  and  has  pierced  my  flesh  ;  that  the  rose  has 
an  agreeable  perfume.  Can  it,  in  its  assumed  state,  do  less  or 
more  ?  Can  it  tell  me  that  the  word  '  rose  '  is  composed  of 
more  or  less  than  four  letters,  or  that  it  is  not  the  name  of  a 
flower?  Can  it  tell  me  that  the  sharp  instrument  is  a  perfume, 
or  the  perfume  a  bodkin?  It  must  render  to  consciousness,  at 
any  particular  moment,  just  such  report  as  the  degree  of  atten- 
tion and  its  then  power  is  able ;  and  that  as  absolutely  as  an 
instantaneous  photograph  must  respond  to  the  conditions  of 
light  and  shade  at  the  instant  of  exposure.  It  tells  me  that 
what  I  read  is  interesting  or  dull,  melancholy  or  humorous,  true 
or  false,  as  it  is  competent.  True  it  is  that  different  intelli- 
gences, or  the  same  intelligence  at  different  times,  pronounce 
divers  judgments  upon  the  same  thing.  It  is  often  deceived  : 
sees  what  is  false  as  true,  and  the  true  as  false ;  it  may  be  con- 
fused or  in  doubt ;  but  it  has  not  two  voices  at  the  same  instant. 
For  the  nonce  it  is  what  it  is,  and  has  no  power  in  itself  to 
change  the  result.  And  thus  thought,  as  such,  has  in  it  no 
possible  element  of  liberty. 


ETHICAL.  3  I  5 

It  is,  therefore,  vain  to  look  for  the  ground  of  morality  in 
either  thought  or  feeling  as  such ;  and  any  system  of  ethics 
founded  upon  Pleasure,  or  Happiness,  or  the  '  Fitness  of 
Things,'  or  Utility,  or  anything  whatever  -which  reaches  no 
higher  than  thought  and  feeling,  is  founded  upon  a  miscon- 
ception of  the  psychical  conditions  of  personality. 

Where,  then,  shall  we  look  ?  We  have  only  the  Will  left ; 
and  if  moral  accountability  exist  at  all,  it  must  depend  upon 
this  master-mode  of  the  self. 

We  have  seen  abundantly  already  that  sensation  and  thought 
cannot  be  numerically  separated  from  the  will,  nor  the  will  from 
either  of  them.  It  is  not  enough  that  the  eyes  be  open,  and 
the  page  exposed,  to  read.  There  must  be  attention,  in  one 
degree  or  another.  But  what  is  it  to  attend  ?  It  is  to  energize 
or  exert  power.  There  is  energy  of  some  sort  in  all  thinking 
and  feeling,  even  in  the  illustrations  used  above,  in  which  the 
dominating  elements,  sensation  and  understanding,  were  em- 
phasized ;  there  was  also  present,  of  course,  some  degree  of 
volition.  When  I  withdrew  from  the  sharp  instrument  it  was 
not  sensibility  that  acted,  even  though  the  movement  was  auto- 
matic ;  nor  when  I  discovered,  as  was  possibly  the  case,  that 
there  was  a  mischievous  urchin  behind  the  pin,  it  was  not  the 
intellect  that  administered  chastisement.  It  was  the  self,  com- 
prehending the  state  of  the  case  through  sensation  and  under- 
standing, which  put  forth  the  volitional  energy. 

It  is  not  necessary  to  go  over  again  the  question  of  this  free 
activity.  It  is  simply  a  fact  of  consciousness  forced  upon  us, 
affirmed  in  consciousness  in  the  very  act  of  denial,  and  just  as 
certain  as  that  there  is  anything  to  deny. 

One  point,  however,  we  must  consider  for  a  moment,  and 
that  is,  the  action  of  motives  upon  the  will.  Motives  there  are, 
though  it  is  quite  certain  that  they  are  not  always  discoverable 
in  consciousness,  as  is  shown  by  the  constant  declaration  that 
one  does  not  know  why  one  did  or  said  this  or  the  other  thing. 


3l6  MECHANISM    AND    PERSONALITY. 

In  them,  as  such,  we  have  seen  that  there  is  no  freedom,  just 
as  there  is  none  in  all  that  follows  the  purposive  epoch  —  the 
actualization  of  an  act  of  will.  But  the  question  is  this  :  Can 
any  one  honestly  declare  that  the  motive  which  governed  his 
action  in  any  case,  he  not  being  in  a  hypnotic  or  other  abnor- 
mal state,  was  so  strong  and  so  definite  in  consciousness  that 
he  could  not  have  disregarded  it  ?  It  may  be  answered  that 
even  if  one  felt  that  one  could  have  set  it  aside,  one  would 
have  had  a  motive  for  doing  even  that.  This  is  clearly  to  shift 
the  point.  The  question  is  not  whether  one  is  so  bound  that 
no  action  is  really  his  own,  but  whether  he  knows  and  feels 
himself  so  bound  that  the  actions  which  are  attributed  to  him 
are  not  his,  but  are  the  result  of  an  irresistible  compulsion  con- 
sciously due  to  environment.  There  can  be  but  one  answer ; 
and  so  whether,  as  known  to  a  hyper-human  being,  we  are 
actually  free  to  will  or  not,  we  feel  —  and  in  this  sense  know 
—  that  we  are  ;  a  knowledge  just  as  certain  as  that  there  is  an 
external  world.  It  is  a  fundamental  fact,  revealed  to  us  in  the 
only  way  anything  can  be  known  to  us,  and  which  admits  of 
no  practical  dispute,  whatever  speculation  may  suggest. 

But  all  free  activities  are  not,  therefore,  moral.  It  is  neces- 
sary, then,  that  we  should  arrive  at  some  definition  of  the 
'good.'  From  what  has  gone  before  it  will  appear  at  once 
that  we  must  look  for  its  ultimate  ground  in  the  one  Infinite 
Personality,  —  the  good  for  us  being  that  which  is  in  harmony 
with  his  laws,  and  the  evil,  that  which  is  in  conflict  therewith. 

But  there  are  two  obvious  senses  in  which  we  may  use  the 
word  '  good.'  It  may  mean  anything  which  promotes  the 
growth  or  development  of  '  thing ' ;  as  the  building  up  of  tis- 
sue in  the  body,  in  the  animal  and  vegetable  worlds ;  or 
causes  any  economic  or  esthetic  change  in  the  material  world. 
We  speak  of  good  health,  good  food,  good  fortune,  and  in 
general,  of  anything  which  has  value,  that  is,  ministers  to  the 
happiness  and  general  well-being  of  man.  These  all  fall  under 


ETHICAL.  317 

one  or  other  of  two  heads,  —  the  pleasurable  or  the  useful. 
Attempts  have  been  made  to  find  the  end  of  all  human  effort 
in  either  of  these ;  giving  rise  to  the  systems  of  Hedonism, 
with  Hobbes  as  its  most  notable  exponent  in  modern  times, 
and  Utilitarianism,  with  Bentham  as  its  chief  exponent.  They 
both,  together  with  a  number  of  other  phases  held  by  eminent 
writers,  may  be  classed  under  one  general  head  —  selfism. 

The  other  sense  of  '  good '  is  synonymous  with  virtue.  This 
is  moral  good,  and  finds  its  essence,  not  in  the  end  of  the 
action,  but  in  the  act  itself. 

But  as  there  must  always,  in  any  action,  be  an  end  towards 
which  the  effort  tends,  in  virtue,  the  end  is  never  self,  but  the 
not-self.  This  is  now  commonly  called  Altruism.  The  essen- 
tial difference  between  these  two  kinds  of  good  lies  in  this : 
selfism  looks  inward  ;  Altruism  looks  outward. 

In  selfness  there  can  be  no  obligation ;  for  no  law  can  eman- 
ate from  the  self,  which  the  self  cannot  at  any  time  set  aside. 
We  do  indeed  speak  of  "being  true  to  oneself";  but  in  any 
such  case  we  shall  find,  upon  analysis,  that  we  mean  to  hold 
the  self  true  to  some  rule  or  principle  which  has  its  reality 
over  and  above  self.  In  any  system  which  has  one's  own  bet- 
terment or  gain,  or  satisfaction  in  any  form,  for  its  motive,  we 
must  recognize  an  inflow  towards  the  centre  and  source  of 
action.  It  is  acquisitive  in  its  nature,  and  the  only  law  which 
governs  or  moves  the  actor  can  look  no  higher  for  its  source 
and  authority  than  the  individual  personality  itself;  and  thus 
cannot  be  binding  in  the  slightest  degree  one  moment  longer 
than  held  to  by  the  self.  For  such  an  action  the  supreme 
power  is  in  the  self,  and  it  must  be  able  to  loose  as  well  as 
bind. 

In  a  selfless,  or  altruistic  volition,  the  flow  or  movement  is 
from  within,  outward.  There  is  a  recognition  of  a  law  laid 
upon  the  self  from  a  paramount  authority,  and  so  obligation 
emerges.  There  is  a  recognition  of  a  '  Law-Giver,'  who  is 


3l8  MECHANISM    AND    PERSONALITY. 

paramount  to  the  self,  and  '  duty/  '  ought,'  '  accountability/ 
gain  their  meaning.  This  source  of  law  with  the  child  begins 
with  parents  and  masters,  and  rises  through  the  stages  of  all 
human  law,  express  and  implied,  in  society  and  government. 

But  one  soon  finds  that  there  is  a  source  of  law  which  is  the 
1  ground  '  of  all  human  laws,  —  a  source  above  and  beyond  the 
temporal  —  proceeding  from  the  Author  of  all  rule  and  author- 
ity —  the  Infinite  Law-Giver.  His  laws  come  to  us  in  a  two- 
fold order :  one  the  law  of  mechanism ;  the  other  the  law  of 
personality.  We  call  the  one  Nature,  the  other  Spirit. 

Now  Nature,  or  Mechanical  law,  bears  in  her  hands  her 
rewards  and  punishments  visible  and  open.  Her  voice  is,  Do 
this  and  you  shall  surely  have  your  pay  in  current  coin  :  or,  If 
you  do  not  this,  behold  the  rod  !  It  is  a  system  of  open  and 
avowed  rewards  and  punishments.  One  who  follows  the  bent 
of  a  desire  does  it  because  he  expects  the  gratification  which 
attends  it.  One  who  takes  bodily  exercise  does  it  because  he 
expects  increased  health  and  strength  :  one  who,  relying  upon 
nature's  law  of  compensations,  gives  up  leisure  for  toil,  expects 
return  in  money,  in  skill,  in  learning,  in  power  of  one  or  other 
of  its  thousand  sorts.  He  does  not,  it  is  true,  always  get  what 
he  expects.  That  would  be  too  much,  —  that  would  mean  the 
entire  satisfaction  and  saturation  of  his  nature ;  he  would  not, 
and  could  not,  look  further.  But  he  does  get  just  what  nature 
promises,  and  what  he  knows  she  promises,  if  he  be  at  the 
pains  honestly  to  inform  himself.  He  gets  satisfaction  up  to  a 
certain  limit,  more  or  less  sharply  defined  ;  but  he  knows  that 
there  is  such  a  limit,  and  he  knows  when  he  is  passing  it ;  but, 
for  the  sake  of  some  remaining  sparkle,  he  is  willing,  too  often, 
to  drink  the  dregs  which  he  clearly  sees. 

This  pleasurable  or  happiness  stage,  in  the  order  of  nature, 
does  not  wear  the  rigorous  aspect  of  law.  There  is  small 
token  of  compulsion,  —  her  aspect  is  one  of  smiles  and  en- 
ticements. This,  because  she  must  play  the  nurse  to  man's 


ETHICAL.  319 

higher  life;  and,  in  order  to  lead  him  forward  to  a  proper 
knowledge  of  his  self-developing  and  self-governing  functions, 
there  must  be  more  caresses  than  cuffs.  But,  if  she  is  felicitous 
and  gracious,  she  is  at  the  same  time  firm  and  inexorable. 
She  is  sure  to  show  the  danger  line ;  and  if  it  be  not  heeded, 
we  must  take  the  consequences.  Nor  does  the  plea  of  igno- 
rance avail.  If  one,  under  the  firm  conviction  that  one  is 
sweetening  his  tea  with  sugar,  should  use  arsenic  instead,  the 
result  would  not  be  less  fatal  because  the  result  was  not  fore- 
seen. If  one  should  walk  off  a  piazza  in  the  dark,  one's  con- 
fidence that  there  was  no  danger  would  not  save  a  broken 
limb.  So,  too,  if  an  engineer  build  a  bridge  out  of  bad 
materials,  thinking  them  good,  or  upon  wrong  calculations  of 
the  strains,  calamity  would  result  as  surely  as  if  he  had  intended 
to . produce  the  disaster.  Thus  it  is  that  nature  holds  every 
man  to  the  same  account  as  if  he  were  omniscient.  She  gives 
us  the  power  to  inquire  into,  and  find  out,  her  ways,  and 
abundant  warning  that  she  makes  no  exception  in  her  mechan- 
ical order,  and  that  we  act  —  must  act  at  our  peril. 

In  all  this  phase  of  nature's  order,  we  are  but  accepting  her 
gifts,  —  using  them  rightly  to  our  profit,  or  wrongly  to  our 
hurt.  Clearly  there  can  be  no  right  or  wrong,  in  a  moral 
sense,  since  we  are  in  the  attitude  of  beneficiaries,  —  accepting 
her  bounty  to  our  own  gain,  or  abusing  it  to  our  loss  :  and  this 
embraces  the  whole  sphere  of  our  sensuous,  intellectual,  and 
esthetic  life. 

But  this  realm  of  e  things  '  is  not  all  of  life.  This  is  but  the 
acquisitive  —  the  inflowing  phase  of  man's  existence,  in  which 
self  is  consciously  the  object  and  recipient,  in  mind  and  heart, 
of  the  good  gifts  of  the  One  Infinite  Source  of  All  Good. 
These  gifts  are  good,  in  a  right  sense,  only  as  they  are  regarded 
in  the  light  of  this  Infinite  Activity,  —  good  because  they  are 
given,  —  because  they  issue  forth  from  the  Absolute  Person- 
ality. They  are  good  to  us,  because  they  meet  the  uses  and 


32O  MECHANISM    AND    PERSONALITY. 

desires  of  our  nature  ;  but  not  in  us,  because  they  are  but  the 
accidents  and  occasions  of  self-activity  and  self-development. 

The  radical  fault  in  all  systems  of  morality  founded  in  self- 
ism  is,  that  they  stop  in,  and  cannot  by  any  possibility  rise 
above  good,  in  this  reflected  or  borrowed  sense.  They  rest 
in  good  to  man  from  God,  and  cannot  logically,  in  any  possible 
way,  find  room  for  good  in  man,  for  the  love  of  the  good  — 
which  is  only  another  way  of  saying  —  for  God's  sake. 

The  second  and  higher  aspect  of  Law,  which  we  have  called 
the  Law  of  the  Spirit  —  for  and  through  which  the  lower  phase 
is  entitled  to  reality  —  is  the  exact  contradictory  of  this  Law 
of  Nature.  In  it  there  is  an  outflow,  in  obedience  to  a  recog- 
nized obligation  laid  upon  self.  It  is  a  free  activity,  rendered 
possible  by  the  fact  of  man's  power  of  self-determination. 
Though  infinitely  less  in  degree,  it  is  of  the  same  nature  as 
that  natural  good,  which  we  have  been  considering,  regarded 
from  its  preternatural  or  divine  side.  That  looked  from  God 
toward  man ;  this  looks  from  man  toward  God.  God  gives  to 
man ;  man,  by  the  power  given  him,  gives  to  God.  God,  as 
absolutely  free  and  of  infinite  power,  is  All  Good.  Man,  as 
bound  about  on  all  sides,  is  free  only  in  the  purposive  epoch 
of  the  will.  He  is  in  this  one  respect,  in  the  '  image  '  of  his 
Creator ;  so  that  as  God  is  the  source  and  ground  of  All  Good, 
man  by  this  power  of  self-activity  —  itself  a  gift  to  him  —  is 
competent  to  be  the  source  of  some  good.  And  just  as  all 
Natural  Good  —  the  World-Gift,  is  the  creative  out-go  from 
the  Infinite,  the  All-Giver,  so  the  limited,  the  little  good  man 
is  competent  to,  is  the  purposive  outflow  from  self.  This  is 
morality  ;  —  this  is  self-lessness. 

With  this  principle  well  in  view,  we  can  have  no  great  diffi- 
culty to  determine,  at  least  theoretically,  the  moral  quality  of 
any  action.  Whatever  is  for  the  betterment  of  another  is 
moral ;  whatever  is  for  the  sake  of  self,  without  prejudice  to 
another,  is  morally  indifferent,  and  will  be  profitable  or  harm- 


ETHICAL.  321 

ful  according  to  whether  the  judgment  is  sound  or  faulty, 
assuming  it  to  be  honestly  followed.  If  not  honestly  followed, 
it  will  be,  in  so  far,  hurtful.  That  which  is  purposely  hurtful 
to  another  is  wrong,  —  is  evil. 

With  regard  to  self-less  or  moral  action.  As  we  have  seen, 
it  must  be  altruistic,  that  is  to  say  it  must  have  an  object 
which  is  not  self,  and  the  purpose  must  be  the  betterment 
of  such  object.  But  the  moral  quality  does  not  lie  in  the 
object,  nor  in  the  actualization  which  follows  the  purposive 
epoch.  The  intended  good  '  thing '  may  utterly  fail  of  the  pur- 
pose by  accomplishing  nothing,  or  even  by  working  a  positive 
hurt  to  the  object.  For  example,  one  with  a  benevolent  pur- 
pose may  buy  bread  to  feed  the  poor.  It  may  never  reach 
them,  or  reaching  them,  may  prove  to  be  unwholesome,  or 
even  poisoned,  and  so  work  destruction.  Such  results  do  not 
in  the  least  affect  the  virtue  of  the  volitional  factor,  and  so  the 
action  itself.  The  moral  quality,  thus,  lies  neither  in  the 
material  of  the  action,  nor  in  the  result,  but  in  the  purpose. 
The  fact  is,  that  both  the  material  and  the  result  are  mechani- 
cal. It  is  only  the  will  in  the  purposive  epoch  that  is  free. 
The  motions  of  hand  or  tongue  are  neither  of  them  free ;  for 
once  the  purposive  energy  of  the  will  is  put  forth,  the  motor- 
nerves  and  the  muscular  response  are  in  no  essential  point 
different  from  the  blind  action  of  a  machine.  The  tongue  or 
hand  may  not  move  at  all,  or  may  move  in  a  different  way  from 
that  intended,  entirely  dependent  upon  the  degree  of  excellence 
in  the  bodily  organism. 

In  the  same  way,  the  result  of  the  movement,  in  its  immedi- 
ate aspect,  is  movement  only.  Whatever  psychical  effects  may 
follow  will  be  mediate  or  secondary,  depending  directly  upon 
the  use  made  by  other  personalities  of  such  movement  as  a 
stimulus. 

Now  the  object  towards  which  this  free-purposive  energy  is 
exerted  in  a  moral  effort  must  be,  either  other  individual  per- 


322  MECHANISM    AND    PERSONALITY. 

sonalities,  or  the  One  Infinite  Person.  With  a  child  in  the 
early  stage  of  moral  development,  it  will  be  mother,  nurse, 
playmates,  or  even  pets,  towards  whom  this  energy  is  exerted ; 
but  after  a  certain  stage  of  moral  discernment  is  reached, 
largely  dependent  upon  education,  it  will  be  discovered  that 
there  is  a  Power  above  and  beyond  all  these  which  is  the 
source  of  all  good  ;  —  and  from  this  time  forth,  individuals  and 
the  All-Father  can  never  be  disassociated  in  a  moral  action. 
No  good  '  thing'  can  be  purposed  for  the  betterment  of  any, 
which  does  not  accord  with  the  more  general  purpose  to 
will  in  harmony  with  the  Infinite  Will :  and  wherever  there  is  a 
temptation  towards  such  divorcement,  the  Infinite  must  take 
precedence,  or  the  effort  ceases  to  be  virtuous. 

But  now  the  question  arises,  How  can  we  know  the  will  of 
the  Infinite  Good?  The  answer  is,  We  know  it  just  as  we  know 
anything  else  which  is  disclosed  to  us  —  that  is  through  the 
understanding.  By  virtue  of  the  primordial  order  written  large 
upon  the  nature  of  the  self,  and  of  the  capacity  given  in  accord 
with  it,  we  must  understand  or  co-ordinate  the  phenomena  of 
the  world  about  us ;  and  as  we  gather  knowledge  of '  things,' 
little  by  little,  so  we  must  begin  to  construe  actions,  as  well  in 
the  realm  of  the  '  good  '  as  in  the  realm  of  '  things.'  In  the 
latter  sphere  in  which  we  distinguish  the  mere  useful  or  pleas- 
ing, and  in  which  there  is  no  necessary  moral  quality,  the 
understanding  is  not  faultless,  but  varies  from  time  to  time,  — 
pronouncing  that  useful,  pleasing,  or  true,  which,  upon  more 
reflection  or  in  better  light,  is  seen  to  be  hurtful,  impleasing,  or 
false.  In  like  way,  the  understanding  has  no  claim  to  infallibility 
in  its  judgments  in  regard  to  the  morally  good.  And  thus  it 
is  that  we  see  a  wide  difference,  in  many  points,  as  to  what  is 
held  to  be  good  among  people  of  the  same  general  environ- 
ment, as  well  as  in  those  widely  separated  in  space  and  time. 
But  as  there  is  a  large  area  of  general  agreement,  with  a  nar- 
rower circle  of  absolute  and  necessary  agreement  in  the  judg- 


ETHICAL.  323 

ments  of  the  understanding  in  the  sphere  of  sensuous  and  intel- 
lectual truth,  so  there  is  a  large  area  of  general  moral  truth, 
with  a  correspondingly  narrow  inner  circle  of  absolute  moral 
convictions ;  and  the  agreement  in  the  universal  consciousness 
of  men  is  not  measurably  larger  in  the  one  case  than  in  the 
other. 

For  example,  in  the  sensuous  and  intellectual  domain,  people 
differ  as  to  the  agreeability  of  the  flavor  or  perfume  of  fruits ; 
as  to  this  or  the  other  theory  of  economics,  this  or  the  other 
explanation  of  geological,  astronomical,  or  chemical  phenom- 
ena, with  a  large  area  of  agreement.  They  agree  entirely  upon 
the  fundamental  principles  of  mathematics. 

In  the  domain  of  moral  truth,  they  differ  as  to  the  morality 
of  horse-racing,  cock-fighting,  card-playing,  the  use  of  intoxi- 
cating liquors,  and  many  like  points.  They  agree  as  to  theft, 
cruelty,  injustice,  selfishness,  and  all  that  can  be  called  essen- 
tial. There  is  no  more  doubt  of  a  general  consentient  voice 
in  moral  than  in  intellectual  truth. 

That  a  moral  action  has  a  different  character  from  all  other 
actions  is  chiefly  attested  by  the  fact  that  consciousness  com- 
pels us  to  recognize  an  obligation  to  put  forth  this  purposive 
energy  in  the  case  of  moral  action,  and  in  no  other.  The 
'  thou  shalt,'  '  thou  shalt  not,'  are  laid  upon  the  self.  This  is 
the  '  Categorical  Imperative '  of  Kant.  The  question  as  to 
whether  it  is  a  fact  of  personality,  or  not,  has  to  be  carried  to 
the  tribunal  of  every  man's  consciousness.  That  the  answer 
can  be  but  one  way,  is  attested  by  the  languages  of  all  peoples, 
by  the  existence  of  human  law,  and  by  every  man's  actions. 
There  is  no  one  who  does  not  use  the  word  '  ought '  in  some 
form  of  expression  or  other,  and  who  does  not  hold  his  fellow- 
man  to  an  accountability.  It  does  not  persuade  nor  counsel, 
but  commands,  and  we  recognize  its  authority. 

It  is  a  most  significant  fact,  that  this  sense  of  obligation 
attaches  to  no  other  class  of  actions  than  the  moral.  When 


324  MECHANISM    AND    PERSONALITY. 

an  act  lacks  the  before-mentioned  characteristics  of  morality, 
it  may  be  done  or  left  undone,  and  the  word  '  ought,'  in  its 
right  sense,  does  not  fit  the  case.  No  obligation  is  felt  to  take 
one,  rather  than  another,  of  two  walks,  when  the  object  is 
mere  recreation ;  or  to  eat  of  a  particular  dish  at  table,  to  sit, 
stand,  run,  or  do  any  other  act,  when  the  relief  of  or  injury  to 
another  is  not  an  issue.  But  any  or  all  of  these  may  become 
moral  by  making  them  touch,  in  any  serious  way,  the  well-being 
of  others ;  in  such  case  obligation  immediately  attaches. 

And  now  the  further  question  presents  itself:  Why  should 
the  class  of  actions  which  we  call  moral,  enjoy  a  higher  pre- 
rogative in  consciousness  than  those  which  are  merely  prudent 
or  expedient  ?  The  simplest  answer  to  this  question  is,  Because 
they  do.  It  is  quite  analogous  to  the  question  as  to  why  the 
whole  is  seen  to  be  greater  than  the  part.  That  and  this  are 
presuppositions  of  Self-nature  —  intuitive  and  immutable  laws 
of  our  being.  From  the  relative  point  of  view,  they  are  en- 
titled to  this  pre-eminence  because  they  touch  the  supreme 
destiny  of  man  as  an  individual  and  a  race. 


THE    NATURE    AND    FUNCTIONS    OF    CONSCIENCE.     325 


CHAPTER   XXX. 

THE  NATURE  AND  FUNCTIONS  OF  CONSCIENCE. 

The  admonitions  of  the  moral  monitor.  Conscience  discovers  itself 
only  upon  change  of  moral  purpose.  Analogy  between  the  functions  of 
conscience  and  inertia.  Analysis.  An  illustration.  Moral  momentum. 

WE  have  not  yet  exhausted  the  facts  of  consciousness  with 
regard  to  moral  action.  Not  only  does  obligation  dis- 
cover itself  to  us  in  all  acts  possessing  moral  quality,  but  an 
admonition  or  penalty  follows  the  failure  to  respond  to  an  obli- 
gation laid  upon  us.  When  the  understanding  makes  it  plain 
to  us,  that  a  particular  action  which  lies  before  us  ought  to  be 
done,  and  we  do  it  not  —  or,  that  it  ought  not  to  be  done, 
and  we  do  it,  we  feel  a  dull,  heavy  distress  about  the  heart, 
which  we  can  neither  avert  nor  control.  It  is  undoubtedly  a 
reflex  action,  and  is  unmistakable  in  character.  It  attends  no 
other  sort  of  actions  than  those  in  which  we  are  made  conscious 
of  moral  obligation,  and  only  follows  a  wilful  disobedience  of 
our  sense  of  right.  In  this  it  is  altogether  unique.  We  may 
run  into  danger,  make  a  pitiful  blunder  in  judgment,  or  stake 
our  fortunes  upon  a  desperate  hazard,  and  all  with  the  worst 
results ;  but  no  one  will  assert  that  conscience  obtrudes  itself 
upon  us  under  any  of  these  circumstances.  There  are  sen- 
sations, very  distinctly  discoverable  on  all  these  occasions, — • 
confusion,  terror,  shame,  sinking- of- heart,  but  none  of  them 
can  be  in  the  least  mistaken  for  that  peculiar  sensation  which 
we  call  '  qualms  of  conscience.' 

This  moral  monitor  is  not,  then,  always  discoverable  :  it  is 
indeed  never  active  where  mere  intellectual  or  esthetic  ques- 


326  MECHANISM    AND    PERSONALITY. 

tions  are  in  issue.  But  is  it  always  discoverable  where  there  is 
moral  activity?  We  think  not.  A  right-minded  man,  following 
uniformly  what  he  understands  to  be  right,  though  constantly 
passing  upon  such  questions,  will  rarely  feel  the  presence  of  this 
admonitory  sensation ;  never,  if  there  be  no  departure,  nor  pur- 
pose of  departure,  from  his  conception  of  right  —  a  state  of 
case  which  could  never  be,  except  in  one  absolutely  perfect. 
But  where  the  right  course  is  plainly  seen,  and  the  obligation 
to  follow  it  clearly  confessed  in  consciousness,  if  one  wills  not 
to  yield  to  the  obligation,  one  is  sure  to  feel  the  dull  thud  of 
conscience.  If  one  change  his  course  from  open,  or  intended 
disobedience,  this  action  of  the  will  is  followed  by  a  corre- 
sponding lightness  of  spirit,  which  is  called  the  approval  of 
conscience.  Thus  conscience  discovers  itself  only  upon  the 
change,  or  purpose  of  change,  from  right  to  wrong  action,  when 
it  will  be  deprecatory ;  or  from  wrong  to  right,  when  it  will  be 
commendatory.  Its  field  of  action,  therefore,  is  entirely 
analogous  to  that  in  which  causation  finds  opportunity  —  in 
change. 

Conscience  is  not  an  illuminating,  nor  judging  power,  in  any 
sense.  It  is  itself  perfectly  blind,  and  always  reactionary  or 
negative.  Hence  we  cannot  say  with  Reid,  and  perhaps  the 
majority  of  writers  on  the  subject,  that  conscience  is  the  '  can- 
dle of  the  Lord  set  up  within  us  to  guide  our  steps.'  It  is 
rather  a  hand-rail  to  keep  us  in  the  right  way.  It  does  not 
point  out  the  way — that  is  the  office  of  the  understanding; 
but  when  we  know  the  way,  or  are  thoroughly  assured  that  we 
do,  it  does  not  fail  to  protest  against  any  departure  from  it. 
It  varies  in  intensity  with  different  people,  without  doubt,  and 
at  different  times,  in  the  same  person,  according  to  the  sudden- 
ness and  gravity  of  the  change  in  conduct. 

Now  there  is  a  striking  analogy  between  this  conserver  of 
the  moral  world,  and  inertia,  the  conserver  of  the  physical 
world.  All  bodies,  by  virtue  of  inertia,  let  it  be  remembered, 


THE    NATURE    AND    FUNCTIONS    OF    CONSCIENCE.    327 

resist  change,  either  with  respect  to  rest  or  motion ;  that  is, 
a  body  at  rest  resists  all  effort  to  move  it,  and  once  in  motion 
resists  all  effort  to  deflect  it  from  its  rectilinear  course,  or  change 
its  velocity.  The  importance  of  inertia  in  the  mechanical  world 
cannot  be  exaggerated.  By  virtue  of  it  the  woodman's  axe  is 
enabled  to  do  its  office ;  while  it  maintains  the  movement  and 
stability  of  the  celestial  world.  What  it  is,  we  do  not  know. 
It  is  essentially  negative  in  character,  —  never  acting  unless 
first  acted  upon.  It  is  the  conserver  of  the  mechanical  uni- 
verse. Now  this  is  just  the  office  which  conscience  performs 
on  the  psychical  side  of  personality. 

Let  us  examine  this  somewhat  in  detail.  Inertia  is  purely 
reactionary,  —  does  not  exert  energy,  but  resists  simply.  In 
like  way,  conscience  does  not  manifest  itself  unless  there  is 
conscious  deviation,  or  purpose  of  deviation,  from  the  moral 
path  upon  which  the  self  is  moving ;  but  immediately  upon  the 
advent  of  a  purpose  of  deviation,  it  sets  up  its  resistance.  Again, 
a  body  once  settled  in  its  new  path  after  inertia  has  made  all 
the  resistance  competent  to  it,  there  is  no  further  resistance  — 
inertia  becomes  again  quiescent.  So  with  conscience.  When 
the  will  has  acted,  and  conscience  has  been  overridden,  the 
protest  ceases,  and  is  not  felt  so  long  as  there  is  no  glancing 
back  —  no  entertainment  of  the  once  felt  obligation ;  but  when- 
ever purpose  becomes  tremulous,  the  reactionary  emotion  of 
conscience  begins  again  to  act,  and  the  will  is  solicited  to 
relinquish  the  path  taken  up  against  its  protest,  and  return  to 
that  which  is  seen  to  be  of  obligation. 

Once  more,  it  will  be  remembered  that  the  line  of  right 
action,  as  disclosed  by  the  understanding,  is  not  absolute  and 
unvarying,  but  changes  from  time  to  time  in  the  same  person. 
That  which  we  at  one  time,  and  under  certain  circumstances 
and  teachings,  thought  right,  we,  under  new  influences  and  in 
better  light,  come  to  see  was  narrow  and  ill-founded ;  and  we 
determine  to  abandon  the  old  way  for  the  new.  Now,  if  con- 


328  MECHANISM   AND    PERSONALITY. 

science  is  blind,  like  inertia,  and  knows  nothing  but  action,  it 
must  resist  the  change,  even  from  the  worse  to  the  better.  Is 
not  this  in  accordance  with  the  facts  of  experience?  The 
point  is  a  delicate  one,  and  the  facts  upon  which  to  test  it  are 
scant.  The  change  must  be  marked  and  somewhat  sudden  for 
the  reaction  of  the  moral  monitor  to  be  clearly  distinguishable ; 
but  most  people  probably  have  some  experience  upon  the  point. 
Let  us  take  a  case  of  frequent  occurrence  in  America,  —  that 
of  a  youth  brought  up  under  the  unquestioning  conviction  that 
it  is  sinful  to  play  at  cards,  to  dance,  or  to  drink  wine.  Let  it 
happen  that,  after  a  time,  in  associating  with  people  who  hold 
that  the  wrong  is  not  in  these  things,  per  se,  but  in  their  abuse, 
his  own  judgment  parts  company  with  that  of  his  father  and 
mother.  Will  he  not  upon  first  indulging  himself  in  these 
things,  now  regarded  innocent,  discover  the  admonitions  of  this 
blind  monitor?  Many  persons  certainly  have  felt  such  qualms, 
and  if  there  has  not  been  sufficient  time  for  the  moral  current 
to  settle  in  its  new  bed,  every  one  must.  So  long  as  a  thing 
remains  merely  a  speculative  opinion,  there  is  no  action  on  the 
part  of  conscience.  The  understanding  is  all  the  time  modify- 
ing the  sensibilities,  but  it  is  a  slow  process,  and  very  gradual. 
The  will  must  actively  co-operate,  not  only  in  the  prosecution 
of  the  enquiries  of  the  understanding,  but  in  purposive  deter- 
minations to  follow  the  new  light  in  conduct  when  opportunity 
serves.  Thus  the  current  of  one's  moral  nature  is  gradually 
turned ;  but  at  every  point  on  the  one  hand  or  the  other,  when 
the  change  is  sudden,  conscience  makes  a  stand. 

This  accounts  for  the  fact  that  some  men,  persisting  in  evil 
ways,  are  not  troubled  by  the  stings  of  conscience,  while  others 
following  like  courses  are  always  in  a  flutter.  In  the  first 
case  there  is  no  thought  of  returning  to  the  right  way,  and 
in  the  second  the  self  is  moving  in  a  constrained  path,  and 
the  will  is  ever  on  the  point  of  giving  up  to  the  recognized 
obligation. 


THE   NATURE    AND    FUNCTIONS    OF    CONSCIENCE.    329 

But,  it  may  be  asked,  how  is  it  that  men  sometimes  become 
utterly  dead  to  the  stings  of  conscience,  or  rather  that  con- 
science ceases  to  sting.  The  explanation  seems  plain  enough. 
We  may  distinguish  two  stages  of  this  condition :  first,  that  in 
which  by  long  and  unswerving  persistence  in  disregard  of  the 
still  recognized  obligations  of  right,  the  moral  current  has  be- 
come sluggish,  and  the,  at  best,  faint  sensation  has  worn  itself 
out  by  familiarity.  There  is  almost  no  moral  momentum,  and 
therefore  no  reaction  developed. 

The  other  stage  is  more  melancholy.  It  is  when  the  power 
of  seeing  what  is  right  is  almost  gone.  The  will  acts  upon  and 
modifies  the  understanding.  It  cannot  by  a  simple  mandate 
make  it  see  a  thing  at  any  moment  other  than  it  actually 
appears,  but  in  all  matters  of  opinion  it  is  easily  warped  by  the 
indirect  action  of  the  will.  Through  interest  and  desire  it  can 
be  blunted  and  blurred,  just  as  a  microscope  or  the  eye  itself 
can  be  injured  —  put  out  of  focus  or  weakened  —  so  that  by 
misuse  or  abuse  it  is  rendered  almost  useless.  A  thing  which 
the  judgment  sees  to  be  morally  bad  cannot  in  the  same 
moment  be  thought  good,  but  the  will  can  throw  hues  of  desire 
upon  it,  and  after  a  time  it  will  appear  quite  different.  By  a 
long-continued  tampering  with  honest  convictions,  one  may 
come  at  last  to  have  small  power  —  perhaps  no  power  at  all  — 
to  distinguish  right  from  wrong.  "  If  the  light  that  is  in  thee 
be  darkness,  how  great  is  that  darkness."  This  is  that  con- 
dition which  one  may  bring  upon  oneself  denounced  by  the 
prophet :  "  Woe  unto  them  which  call  evil  good  and  good 
evil ! "  Manifestly  in  such  a  moral  state  the  conscience  is 
dead. 

When,  then,  is  this  reaction  in  the  heart  most  active?  In 
those  persons,  clearly,  who  are  most  scrupulous  to  ascertain 
and  do  what  is  right.  They  gather  a  moral  velocity  by  the 
accelerating  energy  of  the  will,  so  that  the  slightest  deviation 
from  the  way  they  hold  to  be  right  causes  them  a  far  greater 


33O  MECHANISM    AND    PERSONALITY. 

distress  than  a  positive  crime  would  to  one  whose  moral  ki- 
netic energy  is  small.  Thus  it  is  that  one  may  know  oneself  to 
be  in  a  low  state  of  virtue,  when,  upon  the  perpetration  of  a 
wrong,  there  is  no  positive  reaction  discovered  on  the  part  of 
conscience ;  and,  on  the  other  hand,  no  one's  case  is  desperate 
who  finds  this  reflex  action  still  strong  within  him. 

There  is  still  one  point  which  demands  notice.  If  the  anal- 
ogy between  the  part  played  by  conscience  in  the  conservation 
of  spiritual  verity,  and  that  played  by  inertia  in  the  conservation 
of  physical  reality  be  complete,  then,  any  increase  of  moral 
energy  must  be  at  the  cost  of  a  resistance  overcome ;  for  in- 
ertia reacts  to  prevent  increase  of  velocity,  just  as  certainly  as 
to  prevent  loss.  That  we  do  find  such  resistance  can  hardly 
be  disputed.  '  The  last  state  is  worse  than  the  first.'  The  loss 
of  momentum  can  only  be  regained  gradually  by  the  expendi- 
ture of  a  constant  force ;  and,  that  it  is  necessary  to  expend  a 
great  deal  of  moral  energy  to  recover  lost  ground,  everybody 
knows  only  too  well. 

Let  us  try  to  make  all  this  a  little  more  practical  by  an  illus- 
tration. Take  a  steamship,  and  let  her  be  supposed  in  any 
great  current  of  the  sea,  say  the  Gulf  Stream.  Now,  assuming 
the  vessel  to  be  entirely  motionless,  she  would  nevertheless  be 
carried  forward  toward  the  north  at  the  rate  of  four  or  five 
knots  an  hour.  But  she  is  fitted  up  with  engines  by  means  of 
which  to  take  on  a  proper  motion  of  her  own.  She  is  also 
provided  with  compass  and  chart  by  which  she  can  know  her 
course.  In  addition  to  this,  she  has  a  rudder  by  which, 
through  the  man  at  the  wheel  keeping  his  eyes  upon  the 
needle,  she  is  held  upon  her  course. 

We  recognize  at  once  in  the  current  which  carries  the  ship 
blindly  forward,  the  steady  flow  of  vitality,  the  whole  trend  of 
subconscious  activities,  and  the  general  environments  of  life. 
We  are  all  impelled  by  nature,  without  thought  or  concern  on 
our  part,  towards  a  higher  evolution,  —  within,  by  the  action  of 


THE    NATURE    AND    FUNCTIONS    OF    CONSCIENCE.    33! 

the  heart  in  supplying  blood  to  tissue,  the  lungs  in  their  respira- 
tory functions,  the  whole  nutritive  system  in  digestion,  and  the 
world  of  reflex  action ;  without,  by  the  reaction  of  place  and 
circumstance  in  life,  family,  society,  and  government. 

In  the  ship's  motive  power,  we  see  a  likeness  to  the  part 
played  by  feeling  when  fully  formed  in  consciousness,  which  is 
the  basis  of  personal  mobility  of  body  and  mind.  In  the  needle 
we  recognize  the  line  of  right  action  as  disclosed  to  us  by  the 
understanding,  —  rarely  on  the  absolutely  true  meridian,  and 
always  fluctuating  in  some  degree ;  but,  though  passing  and 
repassing  the  true  line,  through  temporarily  perturbing  influ- 
ences, always  returning  to  it  when  the  disturbing  cause  is 
removed  :  while  the  chart  shows  the  bearing  of  all  points  with 
respect  to  the  grand  axial  line  of  conscious  right.  In  the  rud- 
der, we  have  the  power  of  self-direction  through  the  free  activ- 
ity of  the  will  at  the  helm.  In  the  beginning  of  life,  we  are 
carried  forward,  almost  wholly  by  the  (to  us)  blind  forces  ;  but 
after  a  time  the  masterful  power  of  purposive  control,  in  the 
light  of  the  understanding,  shows  itself  at  the  helm  of  right 
action,  and  from  that  time  forth,  the  haven  toward  which  we 
sail  we  determine  for  ourselves. 

But  we  must  not  leave  out  of  sight  a  most  important  factor 
in  the  ship's  economy,  one  without  which  she  could  keep  no 
course  and  could  reach  no  appointed  haven,  but  would  drift 
hopelessly  at  the  mercy  of  wind  and  tide.  It  is  the  reaction  of 
the  water  upon  her  keel  and  sides,  as  well  as  upon  the  blades 
of  her  propeller.  She  could  not  move  an  inch  if  it  were  not  for 
this  reaction  upon  her  propeller ;  nor  could  she  have  any  steer- 
age way,  if  it  were  not  for  the  reaction  of  the  water  on  keel  and 
sides.  This  reaction  is  purely  negative,  unseen,  and  perhaps, 
unknown  to  most  people  ;  but  without  it  there  could  be  no  cer- 
tainty, no  safety,  and  no  directed  motion  at  sea.  And  yet  its 
immediate  office  is  to  resist  — -  to  resist  change  in  direction,  or 


332  MECHANISM   AND    PERSONALITY. 

change  in  velocity.  This  is  inertia ;  and  this  is  the  correspond- 
ing office  of  conscience  in  self-destiny.  It  is  just  as  absolutely 
necessary  in  moral  movement,  and  in  the  conservation  of  moral 
reality,  as  reaction  in  mass  is  in  the  mechanism  of  the  outer 
world,  and  the  conservation  of  physical  energy. 


THE    INFINITE    PERSONALITY.  333 


CHAPTER  XXXI. 

THE   INFINITE   PERSONALITY. 

Personal  good  implies  personality  in  God.  The  Mosaic  account  of  the 
origin  of  evil  in  man.  Disobedience.  Obedience.  A  class  of  theologians 
faulted.  Conflict  and  agreement  of  the  Finite  and  the  Infinite.  Theology. 
Religion.  Human  aspirations.  Quotation  from  Mrs.  Browning.  Con- 
clusion. 

SO  long  as  men  know  that  '  good '  is,  so  long  they  must 
know  that  God  is.  Good,  in  its  only  right  sense,  presup- 
poses, and  is  inconceivable  apart  from,  Personality;  and  Per- 
sonality, in  its  highest  term,  is  God.  The  one  indisputable  fact 
of  the  universe  for  every  man,  we  repeat  for  the  last  time,  is 
Personality,  In  the  moment  of  direst  scepticism,  the  con- 
sciousness of  doubt  carries  with  it  the  further  and  higher  con- 
sciousness of  self,  as  a  necessary  and  precedent  fact :  and  unless 
one  can  arrive  at  such  a  stupendous  egoism  as  to  hold  one's 
self  to  be  the  sole  and  only  reality,  subsisting  in  a  sublime  iso- 
lation of  circumambient  nothingness,  one  must  know  that  there 
are  other  personalities  out  of  and  beyond  one's  own ;  and  that 
the  universe  is  meaningless  and  inconsequent,  except  under  the 
postulate  of  an  Infinite  and  Absolute  Personality  —  God  over 
all. 

But  we  have  further  seen,  that  Personality  is  itself  a  mystical 
tri-unity,  comprising  sensibility,  understanding,  and  will  —  that 
'  good  '  does  not  lie  in  sensibility,  because  there  is  no  element 
of  freedom  in  it ;  nor  in  the  understanding,  because  it,  too,  is 
bound ;  and  that  however  necessary  feeling  and  thought  are, 


334  MECHANISM    AND    PERSONALITY. 

as  accessory  to  the  action  of  volition,  freedom  is  found  in  the 
will  alone. 

But  if  all  things  were  indifferent  —  if  there  were  no  reason 
why  one  thing  should  be  chosen  rather  than  another,  it  is 
inconceivable  that  any  one  act  of  the  will  should  be  better  than 
another ;  that  is  to  say,  there  could  be  no  good  and  no  evil. 
The  consciousness  of  obligation,  therefore,  either  self-imposed, 
or  compelled  from  without,  is  a  necessary  postulate  of  the 
knowledge  of  good  and  evil.  This  consciousness  of  obligation 
is  the  discovery  of  law,  and  law  carries  with  it  the  necessary 
presupposition  of  a  law-giver  :  and  thus  we  arrive  again  at  God, 
the  author  of  All  Good. 

Now,  in  whatever  way  we  may  regard  the  Mosaic  account  of 
the  fall  of  man,  —  whether  we  look  upon  it  as  a  literal  and 
exact  account  of  an  event  historically  true,  and  hold  the  garden 
of  Eden  to  have  been  an  actual  garden  —  the  tree  of  Knowl- 
edge, and  the  tree  of  Life,  actual  objects  of  sense,  and  so  of  all 
else  in  that  simple  story ;  or  whether,  on  the  other  hand,  we 
look  upon  the  whole  of  it  as  pure  allegory,  the  candid  and 
philosophic  mind  must  freely  admit  the  immutable  truth  under- 
lying it  all ;  and  no  literary  ingenuity,  no  rugged  sagacity,  no 
scientific  and  technical  terminology  has  ever  been  able  to  give 
better  form  and  expression  to  the  direful  truth  which  it  dis- 
closes. Man  did  fail  in  the  beginning,  and  he  fails  to-day, 
to  do  the  very  and  exact  right,  by  seizing  or  accepting  to  his 
own  use  that  which  he  knew,  and  knows,  is  forbidden  him : 
and  so,  what  the  theologian  calls  sin  came  into  and  remains  in 
our  humanity  as  a  fact  in  the  consciousness  of  man,  through 
disobedience. 

There  is  but  one  conceivable  way  in  which  man  can  be 
recovered  of  the  disorder  caused  by,  and  still  kept  in  our 
nature  by  disobedience  ;  and  that  is,  by  removing  the  continu- 
ing cause,  and  putting  obedience  in  the  place  of  disobedience. 
No  mere  feeling,  however  poignant  and  tender,  —  no  grasp  of 


THE    INFINITE    PERSONALITY.  335 

the  intellect,  however  clear  and  perspicuous,  as  such,  can  ever 
repair  the  injury,  and  promote  soundness  of  our  moral  nature. 
Holiness,  it  is  true,  implies  and  requires  right  desires,  and 
honest  thinking ;  but  right  and  honesty  are  meaningless  terms 
apart  from  the  free  activity  of  the  will. 

But,  again,  it  must  be  remembered  that  heart  and  mind  are 
not  numerically  separable  from  each  other,  or  from  the  will ; 
but  altogether  form  an  essential  unity  —  one  indivisible  person  : 
so  that  while  Tightness  implies  and  requires  an  uplifting  of  both 
heart  and  mind,  the  paramount  and  active  agent,  in  and  through 
the  whole  self — the  apxrj  —  the  original  and  sovereign  mode 
of  personal  order,  is  the  will. 

Now,  let  it  be  confessed,  that  theologians  have  brought  upon 
themselves  much  of  the  distrust  and  disfavor  of  which  they 
complain,  by  assuming  a  too  exact  —  a  too  '  He-can,'  and  'He- 
cannot,'  '  He-is,'  and  '  He-is-not,'  spirit  in  dealing  with  the 
nature  of  the  Lord  of  All  Power  and  Might.  We  cannot,  in 
the  nature  of  things,  see  the  Infinite  and  Absolute  Personality 
except  through  human  limitations,  and  it  is  impious  and  unsci- 
entific to  attempt  to  tear  away,  or  peer  through,  the  limitations 
which  must  ever  bar  us  from  the  Inscrutable  :  but  for  all  that, 
let  us  be  careful  that  we  do  not  fall  back  upon  an  equally  im- 
pious and  unscientific  Agnosticism,  under  the  specious  convic- 
tion that  we  are  assuming  nothing.  While  we  must  admit  that 
we  do  not  and  cannot  know  the  Infinite  and  Absolute,  in  the 
sphere  of  the  understanding,  rightly  directed  reflection  must 
teach  us  that  there  are  the  same  limitations  in  any  attempt  at 
an  ultimate  knowledge  of  the  finite  and  relative ;  and  that,  in 
like  sense,  we  can  no  more  know  these  than  the  other.  The 
finite  is  meaningless  apart  from  the  necessary  implication  of 
the  infinite  ;  and  the  relative  could  never  have  had  so  much  as 
the  name,  if  the  presupposition  of  the  Absolute  had  not  shot 
through  and  through  what  we  call  things  and  events.  The 
learned  physicist  does  not  know,  in  a  through-and-through 


336  MECHANISM    AND    PERSONALITY. 

sense,  what  his  blow-pipe  or  scalpel  is,  —  he  does  not  know 
what  water,  air,  or  earth  are  :  he  does  not  even  know  that  they 
are  at  all,  with  the  certainty  with  which  he  knows  that  the 
'  thinker '  exists  ;  so  that,  if  the  theologian's  knowledge  runs  up 
into  an  unknown  Infinite  Person,  his  runs  down  into  an  Infinite 
Power,  with  the  difference,  if  a  choice  must  be  made,  clearly  in 
favor  of  the  Spiritual  Absolute.  The  theologian  does  not  know 
all  about  the  One  Good;  but,  through  the  indisputable  con- 
sciousness of  a  sense  of  obligation,  he  does  know  something : 
and  neither  does  the  physicist  know  all  about  the  materials  in  his 
laboratory,  and  even  what  he  does  know,  has  only  a  spiritual 
warrant  for  its  reality.  The  latter's  Agnosticism  is  wrong  end 
first.  He  can,  with  reason,  be  an  agnostic  with  regard  to  the 
Absolute  Good,  only  after  he  has  become  an  agnostic  with 
regard  to  the  finite  '  things,'  and  that  can  never  be  so  long  as 
he  acknowledges  himself  and  '  things  '  to  be. 

The  Greeks  knew  the  impossibility  of  reconciling,  in  the 
domain  of  the  mere  intellect,  the  eternal  conflict  of  the  limited 
and  the  unlimited ;  and  when  they  asked,  How  can  the  one  be 
the  many,  and  the  many  one?  they  proposed  a  problem  which 
has  obtruded  itself  in  every  effort  at  philosophic  thought  since 
their  day,  and  will  continue  to  confront  us  until  God  pleases  to 
lift  the  veil  that  we  may  know  Him  as  He  is. 

This  mystery  stares  us  in  the  face  in  whatever  direction  we 
may  turn  ;  —  Matter  and  Spirit  —  Identity  and  Change  —  Cause 
and  Effect  —  Life  and  Death  —  Good  and  Evil  —  Freedom  and 
Necessity  —  The  Infinite  and  Finite  —  Being  and  Non-Being  — 
God  and  the  Universe  !  No  one  of  all  these  concepts  can  be 
torn  away  from  its  correlative,  without  an  utter  annihilation 
of  the  other ;  and  so,  we  affirm  again,  that  the  visible  things  of 
this  world  are  not  more  certainly  known,  in  the  highest  sense  of 
knowing,  than  the  Invisible  and  Ultimate  ground  of  their  being. 

Theology  is  Philosophy  with  a  special  reference  to  the  nature 
of  God,  His  relations  to  man,  and  man's  relations  to  Him. 


THE    INFINITE    PERSONALITY.  337 

Whatever  may  be  construed  touching  the  nature  of  Deity 
comes  to  us,  as  all  construable  knowledge  comes  to  us,  through 
the  understanding.  But  the  source  and  ground  of  the  religious 
element  in  man  is  not  in  the  construing  power,  but  in  the  pre- 
supposition of  the  Pure  Reason.  By  virtue  of  his  discovery  in 
himself  of  a  sense  of  obligation  and  dependence,  it  is  borne  in 
upon  man  that  there  is  a  Power  beyond  and  above  him ;  and 
that  his  well-being  is  dependent  upon  such  power  —  beneficent 
or  malignant  —  as  he  may  look  upon  it.  The  religious  ele- 
ment is  not  educated  into  man,  though  it  may  be  developed 
and  informed ;  but  when  it  is  absent  —  if  that  can  ever  be  — 
it  has  been  educated  out  of  him.  This  is  abundantly  shown 
by  the  history  of  races,  and  of  individuals. 

Religious  doctrine  belongs  to  the  domain  of  the  under- 
standing, while  religious  convictions  belong  to  the  domain 
of  feeling ;  but  the  responsibility  of  developing  right  convic- 
tions and  of  true  desires  and  aspirations  depends  upon  the 
free  activity  of  the  will.  The  objective  manifestation  of  the 
religious  element  is  twofold  —  looking,  from  its  benevolent 
side,  to  the  well-being  of  man,  and  bearing  fruit  in  alms-deeds, 
and  all  manner  of  benefactions,  through  the  recognition  of  the 
paramount  obligation  to  the  Good.  The  other  phase  becomes 
articulate  in  the  worship  of  the  All-Good  in  love  and  awe  of 
His  Infinite  Majesty. 

It  has  been  said,  that  as  men  paint  with  colors  to  give  an 
idea  of  things  in  strange  countries,  so  God  paints  with  things 
and  peoples  and  events  to  give  us  notions  of  heavenly  and 
supernatural  things.  We  go  with  our  faces  turned  down  to 
the  ground  in  search  of  creeping  things,  so  long  as  we  fail  to 
read  the  spiritual  and  divine  in  what  is  spread  out  before 
us  in  land  and  sea,  and  in  the  heart  of  man.  He  who  con- 
trived our  hearts  in  the  beginning,  and  tuned  them  to  the 
'  level  of  every  day's  most  quiet  need/  gave  them,  as  well, 
those  preternatural  strains  which  lift  us  into  the  transcendent 


33^  MECHANISM    AND    PERSONALITY. 

world  of  the  Beautiful  and  True,  with  a  refrain,  sweet  and 
mystical,  which  lifts  us  higher  still  into  those  celestial  realms 
which 

'  God  only  and  good  angels  know.' 

The  roar  of  the  sea  does  not  more  surely  tell  of  the  near- 
ness of  the  '  multitude  of  waters,'  than  this  murmur  in  the 
heart  tells  of  a  supersensible  and  spiritual  world,  in  us  and 
about  us,  —  a  world  of  spiritual  Realities,  in  whose  light  may 
be  read  the  manifold  riddles  of  the  transitory  and  seeming. 
The  fact  is  that  any  philosophy  which  has  not  for  its  irov  orw 
the  postulate,  man  is  a  spiritual  essence  manifest  in  the  flesh, 
is  founded  upon  '  the  baseless  fabric  of  a  vision,'  leads  down- 
ward and  breeds  corruption. 

There  is  nothing  so  common  that  it  does  not,  if  rightly 
read,  lead  on  to  that  which  is  higher ;  and  each  stage  may  be 
said  to  be  truer  and  more  real  than  the  one  which  preceded 
it.  All  earth  and  earthly  things  are  types  of  the  Infinite  and 
Eternal :  but  the  heart  too  often  clings  to  the  earth,  and 
earthly  things,  and  calls  them  real,  while,  giving  only  now 
and  then  a  furtive  glance  towards  the  spiritual  and  abiding, 
it  calls  them  shadowy  and  seeming. 

And  yet  the  new  is  always  old.  When  God  spoke  to  Moses 
in  the  Mount,  and  bade  him  make  a  sanctuary  to  the  Lord, 
that  He  might  dwell  among  his  people  —  when  He  bade  him 
make  the  ark,  and  the  mercy  seat,  and  candlesticks,  He  charged 
him :  '  Look  that  thou  make  them  after  the  pattern  which  I 
showed  thee  in  the  Mount : '  or  long  before,  when  God  made 
man  in  the  beginning,  He  formed  him  after  no  new  or  strange 
device,  but  said,  '  Let  us  make  man  in  Our  image,  and  after 
Our  likeness  ' ;  and  '  so  God  created  man  in  His  own  image  ' : 
and  thus,  throughout  the  temporal  and  transitory,  we  have 
only  likenesses  and  figures  of  things  higher  and  truer  in  the 
Mount  of  God.  Our  life  is  poor  and  mean,  if  we  fail  to  see  a 


THE    INFINITE    PERSONALITY.  339 

Reality  above  our  work-a-day  environment  —  to  peer  through 
the  seeming  and  behold 

"  The  truth  which  draws 

Through  all  things  upwards;   that  a  twofold  world 
Must  go  to  a  perfect  cosmos.     Natural  things 
And  spiritual,  —  who  separates  these  two 
In  art,  in  morals,  or  in  social  drift 
Tears  up  the  bond  of  nature  and  brings  death, 
Paints  futile  pictures,  writes  unreal  verse, 
Leads  vulgar  days,  deals  ignorantly  with  men, 
Is  wrong,  in  short,  at  all  points.  .  .  . 

Without  the  spiritual,  observe, 
The  natural's  impossible;   no  form, 
No  motion !     Without  sensuous,  spiritual 
Is  inappreciable;   no  beauty  or  power: 
And  in  this  twofold  sphere  the  twofold  man 
****** 

Holds  firmly  by  the  natural,  to  reach 

The  spiritual  beyond  it,  —  fixes  still 

The  type  with  mortal  vision,  to  pierce  through, 

With  eyes  immortal,  to  the  antitype 

Some  call  the  ideal,  —  better  called  the  real, 

And  certain  to  be  called  so  presently 

When  things  shall  have  their  names. 


Every  natural  flower  that  grows  on  earth 
Implies  a  flower  upon  the  spiritual  side, 
Substantial,  archetypal,  all  aglow 
With  blossoming  causes,  —  not  so  far  away, 
That  we  whose  spirit-sense  is  somewhat  cleared 
May  catch  at  something  of  the  bloom  and  breath. 

"No  lily-muffled  hum  of  summer  bee, 
But  finds  some  coupling  with  the  spinning  stars, 
No  pebble  at  your  feet,  but  proves  a  sphere; 
No  chaffinch  but  implies  the  cherubim. 
****** 

Earth's  crammed  with  heaven, 

And  every  common  bush  afire  with  God, 

But  only  he  who  sees,  takes  off  his  shoes." 


34O  MECHANISM    AND    PERSONALITY. 

True  as  all  this  is,  and  clearly  as  it  has  been  seen  by  poet 
and  philosopher,  all  through  the  ages  back  to  Socrates  and 
Plato,  it  is  a  melancholy  fact,  which  every  day  brings  more 
constantly  to  light,  that  there  is  no  holy  ground  for  the  empir- 
ical philosophy  which  assumes  to  guide  the  spirit  of  the  age. 
It  is  so  busy  with  the  natural  that  it  fails  to  see  the  spiritual, 
without  which  the  natural  is  impossible.  Its  curious  gaze  is  so 
bent  upon  the  mere  mechanism,  that  it  fails  to  feel  the  touch 
of  the  Infinite  Personality  which  imparts  the  motion  they  so 
much  applaud.  Lord  Bacon,  with  that  mighty  spirit  of  dis- 
cernment which  enabled  him  to  pierce  through  the  outside 
of  things  to  the  reality  beyond,  says  :  "  As  it  was  aptly  said 
by  one  of  Plato's  school,  the  sense  of  man  resembleth  the  sun 
which  openeth  and  revealeth  the  terrestrial  globe,  but  obscureth 
the  celestial;  so  doth  the  sense  discover  natural  things,  but 
shutteth  up  and  darkeneth  the  divine." 


INDEX. 


Agnosticism,  198. 

Altruism,  320. 

Animal  world.,  95,  152. 

Ants,  91. 

Apperception,  102. 

Architecture,  223. 

Art,  220  f. ;  realism  and  idealism  in, 

222  f. 

Association,  law  of,  125. 

Atoms,   vortex-,   267;   'manufactured 

articles,"  273. 
Automatic  action,  87. 
Axioms,  177. 

Beaver,  93. 

Boscovich,  259. 

Brain,  24;  co-ordination,  26  f. ;  areas, 
27;  lesions,  29;  electrical  stimula- 
tions, 31 ;  development,  35 ;  mass, 

36. 

Browning,  Mrs.,  339. 
Brute  creation,  the,  95,  152. 

Carpenter,  Dr.,  122. 

Categorical  Imperative,  228,  323. 

Causality,  171 ;  in  relation  to  time  and 
space,  187;  inexplicable,  292. 

Cell  theory,  18. 

Certitude,  lack  of,  1-9. 

Change,  problem  of,  283  f. ;  influence 
passing  over,  287. 

Chaetodon  Rostratus,  92. 

Charcot,  Dr.,  146. 

Chasm  between  mechanism  and  con- 
sciousness, 69  f. 

Choice,  231  ;  freedom  of,  314. 


Christian  faith  and  evolution,  88. 

Cicada,  the,  252. 

Cognition,  86  f. ;  no  freedom  in,  313. 

Coleridge,  122,  140. 

Color,  64. 

Concepts,  definite,  102 ;  not  like  ob- 
jects, 117. 

Conscience,  functions  of,  325  f. ;  anal- 
ogy of,  with  inertia,  326 ;  illustration, 

330. 
Corti's  organ,  49. 

Darwin,  evolution,  17,  79;  physical 
basis  of  sensation,  79. 

Deduction,  158. 

Descartes,  anticipated  modern  psy- 
chology, 12  f. 

Divine  Assistance,  290. 

Double  consciousness,  144. 

Dreaming,  133  f.;  dreams  within 
dreams,  141. 

Du  Bois  Reymond,  16;  on  physical 
basis  of  sensation,  80. 

Ear,  48  f. 

Ego,  pure  and  empirical,  105. 

Energy,  193. 

Ether,  272. 

Evil,  origin  of,  334. 

Evolution  and  devolution,  95. 

Eye,  60  f. 

Fechner's  law,  41. 

Feeling,  199  f. ;  scheme  of,  200 ;  quan- 
tity, 204 ;  quality,  205 ;  esoteric  and 


342 


INDEX. 


exoteric,  208 ;  rational,  211 ;  esthetic, 

212. 

Fichte,  300. 

Force,  189 ;  persistent,  192,  198. 

Foster,  Prof.  Michael,  20. 

Gases,  the  kinetic  theory  of,  262. 
Good,  the,  227,  316;  will  of  Supreme, 

how  known,  322;  the  Infinite,  333. 
Gravitation,  269. 

Hamilton,  Sir  William,  183. 

Hearing,  48. 

Hegel,  305. 

Helmholtz,  266. 

Hobbes,  anticipated  modern  science, 

14. 

Hume,  171. 
Huxley,    Professor,   cell    theory,    19; 

physical  basis  of  sensation,  77. 
Huygens,  15. 
Hypnotism,  145  f. 
Hypothetical,  175. 

Idealism,  300  f. 

Illusions,  218,  254. 

Imagination,  126  f. ;  scheme  of,  127. 

Induction,  159,  180. 

Infinite,  nature  of  concept,  280 ;  con- 
flict of,  with  finite,  336. 

Inhibitory  mechanism,  34,  no. 

Innate  ideas,  163  f. 

Instincts,  inverse  order  with  intelli- 
gence, 94. 

Integration  and  redintegration,  103. 

Jelly-specks,  90. 

Kant,  301. 

Knowledge,  immediate,  114. 

Law  of  Excluded  Middle,  167;  of 
Contradiction,  166 ;  of  Identity,  166 ; 
of  Sufficient  Reason,  168,  175. 

Leibnitz,  15,  168,  170. 


Light,  theory  of,  270. 

Locke,  169. 

Logic,  155  f. 

Lotze,  on  local  signs,  41, 119, 302, 309. 

Mass,  a  resistance,  296. 

Materialism,  196. 

Mathematics,  dominates  science,  275 ; 

contradictions  in,  276;  surds,  276; 

cissoid,  278;  the  infinite,  280. 
Matter,  gross  and  sublimated,  250; 

construction  of,  259. 
Maudsley,  80. 

Maxwell,  Professor,  261,  265. 
McKendrick,   Dr.,    26;    on    physical 

basis  of  consciousness,  73. 
Mechanics,  the  foundation  of  physics, 

12  f. ;  molecular,  266. 
Memory,  117;  mechanism  of,  119. 
Metabolism,  21. 
Mill,  J.  S.,  181. 
Molecules,  263. 
Mosso,  139. 

Motion,  incomprehensible,  295. 
Motives,  316. 
Music,  214,  223. 
Muscles,  32. 

Muscular  co-ordination,  97. 
Mutilations,  26  f. 

Nerve-centres,  time  of  action,  30. 
Nerves,  22  f. ;  rapidity  of  transmission 

through,  30. 
Nervous  system,  22. 
Newton's  laws,  173. 

Obedience,  law  of,  334. 
Obligation,  sense  of,  317. 
Occasionalism,  288. 
One  and  the  many,  the,  10,  105. 
Organism,  education  of,  97. 

Painting,  222. 
Pasteur,  80. 
Penitence,  241. 


INDEX. 


343 


Perception,  113. 

'  Persistent  force,'  189. 

Personality,  what?  9;  psychical  fac- 
tor, 82  f. ;  ground  of  action,  188  ;  in 
relation  to  energy,  193;  unity  of, 
242 ;  one  person  and  two  hypostases, 
244;  only  reality,  251,  298,  311. 

Phonograph,  121. 

Physical  basis  of  consciousness,  70. 

Plato,  quoted,  284. 

Poetry,  223,  225. 

Pre-established  harmony,  289. 

Pressure  spots,  42. 

Properties,  of  bodies,  3,  254. 

Protoplasm,  18,  20. 

Protozoa,  245. 

Psychic  factor,  100. 

Pure  Being,  256. 

Pure  reason,  the,  161  f.,  179. 

Rational  truth,  104. 

Reflex  action,  23. 

Religion,  337. 

Romanes,  Professor,  Rede  lecture,  15 ; 

motion  and  sensation,  70. 
Rush,  Dr.,  122. 

Schelling,  303. 

Schultze,  18. 

Schwegler,  307. 

Science,  relation  to  older  learning,  n  ; 

principle  of  modern,  12. 
Sculpture,  222. 
Self,  an  ultimate  fact,  9,  HI;  moral 

bearing,  313. 
Self-consciousness,  107. 
Sensation,  86,  no;  no  liberty  in,  313. 
Senses,  not  infallible,  4 ;  specific,  38 ; 

touch,   39;   taste,  44;   smell,  45  f. ; 

hearing,  48 ;  sight,  60. 


Skepticism,  scope    and    limit,    1-9  j 

practical  and  logical  limit,  6. 
Sleep,  134. 

Smell,  45  f. ;  hearing,  48 ;  sight,  60. 
Somnambulism,  143,  f. 
Sound,  50,  212. 
Space,  116,  182,  185,  294  f. 
Spencer,  Herbert,  193  f. 
Structural  development,  19. 
Sub-consciousness,  87. 
Syllogism,  the,  155. 
Sympathetic  system,  inhibition,  34. 

Tait,  Professor,  189,  264. 

Taste,  44  f. 

Theologians  faulted,  335. 

'  Thing,1  what  ?  254  f.,  273. 

Thinking,  151 ;  explicit,  162. 

Thompson,  Sir  William,  266. 

Threshold  value,  40. 

Time,  116,  183,  185. 

Touch,  38  f. ;  pressure  spots,  cold 
spots,  etc.,  43. 

Tyndall,  Professor,  sound,  54;  physi- 
cal basis  of  sensation,  74,  120. 

Understanding,  the,  149  f. 

'  Unseen  Universe,'  quoted,  250. 

Vision,  216 ;  illusions,  218. 
Vivisection,  26,  29. 
Voice,  the  human,  57. 


weber  s  law,  41. 

Will,  the,  229  f. ;  conscious  volition, 
230 ;  liberty  restricted,  231 ;  inhibi- 
tory function,  232;  moral  aspect, 
240. 

Wordsworth,  217. 

Wundt,  15. 


ADVERTISEMENTS. 


PHILOSOPHY. 


Empirical  Psychology ; 

or,  The  Human  Mind  as  Given  in  Consciousness. 

By  LAURBNS  P.  HICKOK,  D.D.,  LL.D.  Revised  with  the  co-operation  of 
JULIUS  H.  SBELYB,  D.D.,  LL.D.,  President  of  Amherst  College.  12mo. 
300  pages.  Mailing  Price,  $1.25;  Introduction,  $1.12;  Allowance,  40 
cents. 

rpHE  publishers  believe  that  this  book  will  be  found  to  be  re- 
markably  comprehensive,  and  at  the  same  time  compact  and 
clear.     It  gives  a  complete  outline  of  the  science,  concisely  pre- 
sented, and  in  precise  and  plain  terms. 

It  has  proved  of  special  value  to  teachers,  as  is  evidenced  by  its 
recent  adoption  for  several  Reading  Circles. 


John  Bascom,  Pres.  of  University 
of  Wisconsin,  Madison :  It  is  an  ex- 
cellent book.  It  has  done  much  good 
service,  and,  as  revised  by  President 
Seelye,  is  prepared  to  do  much  more. 
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I.  W.  Andrews,  Prof,  of  Intellec- 


tual Philosophy,  Marietta  College, 
0. :  This  new  edition  may  be  confi- 
dently recommended  as  presenting  a 
delineation  of  the  mental  faculties  so 
clear  and  accurate  that  the  careful 
student  will  hardly  fail  to  recognize 
its  truth  in  his  own  experience. 
(April  6, 1882.) 


Hickok's  Moral  Science. 

By  LAURENS  P.  HICKOK,  D.D.,  LL.D.  Revised  with  the  co-operation  of 
JULIUS  H.  SEELYE,  D.D.,  LL.D.,  President  of  Amherst  College.  12mo. 
Cloth.  288  pages.  Mailing  Price,  $1.25;  Introduction,  $1.12;  Allowance, 
40  cents. 

A  S  revised  by  Dr.  Seelye,  it  is  believed  that  this  work  will  be 
found  unsurpassed  in  systematic  rigor  and  scientific  precision, 
and  at  the  same  time  remarkably  clear  and  simple  in  style. 


G.  P.  Fisher,  Prof,  of  Church  His- 
tory, Yale  College :  The  style  is  so 
perspicuous,  and  at  the  same  time  so 
concise,  that  the  work  is  eminently 


adapted  to  serve  as  a  text-book  in 
colleges  and  higher  schools.  In  mat- 
ter and  manner  it  is  a  capital  book, 
and  I  wish  it  God  speed. 


PHILOSOPHY.  127 

Lotze's  Philosophical  Outlines. 

Dictated  Portions  of  the  Latest  Lectures  (at  Gottingen  and  Berlin)  of 
Hermann  Lotze.  Translated  and  edited  by  GEORGE  T.  LADD,  Pro- 
fessor of  Philosophy  in  Yale  College.  12mo.  Cloth.  About  180  pages 
in  each  volume.  Mailing  Price  per  volume,  $1.00;  Introduction  Price. 
80  cents. 

rpHE  German  from  which  the  translations  are  made  consists  of 
the  dictated  portions  of  his  latest  lectures  (at  Gottingen,  and 
for  a  few  months  at  Berlin)  as  formulated  by  Lotze  himself, 
recorded  in  the  notes  of  his  hearers,  and  subjected  to  the  most 
competent  and  thorough  revision  of  Professor  Rehnisch  of  Got- 
tingen. The  Outlines  give,  therefore,  a  mature  and  trustworthy 
statement,  in  language  selected  by  this  teacher  of  philosophy  him- 
self, of  what  may  be  considered  as  his  final  opinions  upon  a 
wide  range  of  subjects.  They  have  met  with  no  little  favor  in 
Germany. 

These  translations  have  been  undertaken  with  the  kind  permis* 
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Outlines  of  Metaphysic. 

rpHIS  contains  the  scientific  treatment  of  those  assumptions 
which  enter  into  all  our  cognition  of  Reality.  It  consists  of 
three  parts,  —  Ontology,  Cosmology,  Phenomenology.  The  first 
part  contains  chapters  on  the  Conception  of  Being,  the  Content  of 
the  Existent,  Reality,  Change,  and  Causation ;  the  second  treats 
of  Space,  Time,  Motion,  Matter,  and  the  Coherency  of  Natural 
Events ;  the  third,  of  the  Subjectivity  and  Objectivity  of  Cog- 
nition. The  Metaphysic  of  Lotze  gives  the  key  to  his  entire 
philosophical  system. 

Outlines  of  the  Philosophy  of  Religion. 

T  OTZE  here  seeks  "  to  ascertain  how  much  of  the  Content  of 
Religion  may  be  discovered,  proved,  or  at  least  confirmed, 
agreeably  to  reason."  He  discusses  the  Proof  for  the  Existence  of 
God,  the  Attributes  and  Personality  of  the  Absolute,  the  Concep- 
tions of  the  Creation,  the  Preservation,  and  the  Government,  of  the 
World,  and  of  the  World-time.  The  book  closes  with  brief  discus- 
sions of  Religion  and  Morality,  and  Dogmas  and  Confessions. 


128 


PHILOSOPHY. 


Outlines  of  Practical  Philosophy. 

rpHIS  contains  a  discussion  of  Ethical  Principles,  Moral  Ideals, 
and  the  Freedom  of  the  Will,  and  then  an  application  of  the 
theory  to  the  Individual,  to  Marriage,  to  Society,  and  to  the  State. 
Many  interesting  remarks  on  Divorce,  Socialism,  Representative 
Government,  etc.,  abound  throughout  the  volume.  Its  style  is 
more  popular  than  that  of  the  other  works  of  Lotze,  and  it  will 
doubtless  be  widely  read. 

Outlines  of  Psychology. 

rpHE  Outlines  of  Psychology  treats  of  Simple  Sensations,  the 
Course  of  Representative  Ideas,  of  Attention  and  Inference, 
of  Intuitions,  of  Objects  as  in  Space,  of  the  Apprehension  of  the 
External  World  by  the  Senses,  of  Errors  of  the  Senses,  of  Feelings, 
and  of  Bodily  Motions.  Its  second  part  is  "  theoretical,"  and  dis- 
cusses the  nature,  position,  and  changeable  states  of  the  Soul,  its 
relations  to  time,  and  the  reciprocal  action  of  Soul  and  Body. 
It  closes  with  a  chapter  on  the  "Kingdom  of  Souls."  Lotze  is 
peculiarly  rich  and  suggestive  in  the  discussion  of  Psychology. 

Outlines  of  /Esthetics. 

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and  of  Phantasy,  and  of  the  Realization  and  Different  Species 
of  the  Beautiful.  Then  follow  brief  chapters  on  Music,  Architec- 
ture, Plastic  Art,  Painting,  and  Poetry.  This,  like  the  other  vol- 
umes, has  a  full  index. 

Outlines  of  Logic. 

rPHIS  discusses  both  pure  and  applied  Logic.  The  Logic  is 
followed  by  a  brief  treatise  on  the  Encyclopaedia  of  Phi- 
losophy, in  which  are  set  forth  the  definition  and  method  of 
Theoretical  Philosophy,  of  Practical  Philosophy,  and  of  the  Phi- 
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Mind,  London,  Eng. :  No  words 
are  needed  to  commend  such  an  en- 
terprise, now  that  Lotze's  importance 


as  a  thinker  is  so  well  understood. 
The  translation  is  careful  and  pains- 
taking. 


PHILOSOPHY.  129 

A  Brief  History  of  Greek  Philosophy. 

By  B.  C.  BURT,  M.A.,  formerly  Fellow  and  Fellow  by  Courtesy  in  the 
Johns  Hopkins  University.  12mo.  Cloth,  xiv  +  296  pages.  Mailing 
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graphs of  criticism  and  interpretation,  however,  being,  as  a  rule, 
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wants  of  the  reader  or  student  who  desires  to  comprehend,  rather 
than  merely  to  inform  himself,  have  particularly  been  in  the  mind 
of  the  author,  whose  aim  has  been  to  let  the  subject  unfold  itself 
as  far  as  possible.  The  volume  contains  a  full  topical  table  of  con- 
tents, a  brief  bibliography  of  the  subject  it  treats,  and  numerous 
foot-notes  embracing  references  to  original  authorities  and  assist- 
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themselves. 
Wisconsin  Journal  of  Education : 


It  fills,  and  we  believe  it  fills  admi- 
rably, a  want  which  has  long  been 
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The  Independent,  New  York :  We 
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and  suggestive  guide  to  the  history    to  Am<  ican  scholarship, 
of  Greek  philosophy. 

The  Philosophical  System  of  Antonio-Rosmini- 

Serbati. 

Translated,  with  a  Sketch  of  the  Author's  Life,  Bibliography,  Introduc- 
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Humanity  Immortal. 

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150 


MISCELLANEOUS. 


A  Handbook  to  Dante. 

By  GIOVANNI  A.  SCARTAZZINI.  Translated  from  the  Italian  with  Note* 
and  Additions  by  THOMAS  DAVIDSON,  MA.,  Author  of  The  Philosophical 
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Essays,  The  Niobe  Group,  etc.  12mo.  Cloth,  xii  +  315  pages.  Mailing 
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a  valuable  Bibliography. 

L.  Clark  Seelye,  Pres.  of  Smith  dents  of  Dante.  The  notes  by  Mr. 
College :  It  seems  to  me  to  meet  a  Davidson  add  much  to  the  value  of 
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the  Athenian  Akropolis,  and  the  (Edipus  Tyrannus  of  Sophocles. 

The  Place  of  Art  in  Education. 

By  THOMAS  DAVIDSON.    44  pages.    Paper.    Mailing  Price,  24  cents. 

Hofmann's  Address. 

On  the  question  of  a  division  of  the  Philosophical  Faculty,  and  of  admit- 
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Berlin.  12mo.  Paper.  77  pages.  Mailing  Price,  25  cents. 

The  Teachers'  Improved  Class-Books. 

No.  I.  16mo.  Cloth.  90  pages.  Mailing  Price,  35  cents ;  Introduction, 
30  cents.  Arranged  for  five  days'  record  each  week,  the  names  of  twenty 
pupils  on  a  page,  and  for  terms  not  exceeding  fifteen  weeks  in  length. 

No.  II.  12mo.  Cloth.  120  pages.  Mailing  Price,  45  cents ;  Introduc- 
tion, 40  cents.  A  six  days'  record  each  week,  twenty-four  names  on  a  page, 
for  terms  of  not  over  fifteen  weeks. 

Twenty  Weeks' Class-Book.  16mo.  Cloth.  90  pages.  Mailing  Price, 
35  cents  ;  for  introduction,  30  cents.  Arranged  for  five  days'  record  each 
week,  and  for  the  names  of  twenty  pupils  on  a  page. 


MISCELLANEOUS.  151 

1.  rpHE  names  of  pupils  in  any  class  need  to  be  entered  but 
once  for  an  entire  term.  2.  The  standing  for  the  three 
months,  instead  of  needing  to  be  compiled  from  different  parts  of 
the  book,  is  presented  to  the  eye  at  one  view.  3.  In  connection 
with  each  month's  record  is  a  blank  for  temporary  memoranda, 
which  may  be  cut  out  when  no  longer  of  use. 

Studies  in  Greek  Thought 

Essays  selected  from  the  papers  of  the  late  LEWIS  R.  PACKARD,  Hill- 
house  Professor  of  Greek  in  Yale  College.  12mo.  Cloth,  vi  +  182  pages. 
Mailing  Price,  $1.00. 

Introduction  to  the  Study  of  Language. 

A  Critical  Survey  of  the  History  and  Methods  of  Comparative  Philology 
of  the  Indo-European  Languages.  By  B.  DELBRUCK.  Translated  by 
EVA  CHANNING.  142  pages.  Paper.  Price,  postpaid,  $1.00. 

The  Order  of  Words  in  the  Ancient  Languages 

Compared  with  the  Modern. 

By  HENRI  WEIL.  Translated  from  the  third  French  edition,  with  notes 
by  CHAS.  W.  SUPER,  Professor  of  Greek  in  the  Ohio  University.  8vo. 
Cloth.  114  pages.  Mailing  Price,  $1.25  ;  to  teachers,  $1.12. 

HHHE  object  of  this  little  work,  by  one  of  the  most  distinguished 
French  philologists,  is  to  explain  as  far  as  it  is  possible  upon 
rational  grounds  the  general  difference  of  arrangement  of  the 
words  in  an  ancient  author  on  the  one  hand  and  a  modern  —  gen- 
erally French  author  —  on  the  other. 

Entrance  Examination  Papers. 

Compiled  by  Dr.  JOHN  S.  WHITE,  Head  Master  of  the  Berkeley  School 
of  New  York  City.  12mo.  Cloth.  iv  +  324  pages.  Mailing  Price,  $1.25  ; 
for  introduction,  $1.12. 


papers  contain  analyzed  sets  of  recent  examinations  pre- 
"    sented  by  Harvard,  Yale,  Columbia,  and  Princeton  Colleges, 
together  with  suggestions  regarding  preparation  for  their  respective 
examinations.     The  book  is  intended  not  merely  for  the  use  of  the 
teacher,  but  also  quite  as  much  for  the  pupil. 


Geo.  Lilley,  Prof,  of  Mathematics, 
Dakota  Agricultural  College :  I  can 
hardly  see  how  a  teacher  in  preparing 
students  for  entering  college  could 


get  along  without  the  book.  It  cer- 
tainly will  be  a  great  aid  both  to 
teacher  and  student. 


BOOKS  IN  HIGHER  ENGLISH. 


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Genung :             Handbook  of  Rhetorical  Analysis 1.12 

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